She couldn’t wait to go back to her own time and tease him over how formal he was in the
past.
⚠
NONE
A cousin. In a way. Lan Sizhui still was not sure how this family dynamic worked now in this place. He would never have considered anyone from the Jiang clan as a family member, but everything was different here. While he was still working out what it meant for people from his world in this time, it was clear that Lady Jiang’s daughter viewed them as family. He would never tell her otherwise.
He knew he was allowed to be at Lotus Pier now, but it still felt a little strange to show up without invitation or notice. He was going it anyway because he wanted to meet her. Lady Jiang, who would technically be Jin Ling’s sister, even if Jin Ling himself was not here.
“Lady Jiang.” Lan Sizhui greeted her when he approached, hands forward, bowing as was custom. How different things would have been if he had grown up with the memories of who he was, and the connections he technically had through Wei Wuxian. If they were cousins, he was many years her senior, and he couldn’t help but wonder what their relationship was like. “It is an honor to meet you.”
When Rina had found herself in the past, it hadn’t been a super surprising thing. For years, people had been telling her about how Vallo was going to send her back to mess with everyone for a little while before she was returned to the future. Still, it was amazing to find her family so young and her mother close to her own age.
Not only that, it was pretty hilarious to see Lan Sizhui so young. The man had a serious case of baby face that would disappear by the time Rina showed up in the family, but that hadn’t stopped her from forming a close relationship with him. They were cousins through and through and he had slotted into the older brother role well with her. She couldn’t wait to go back to her own time and tease him over how formal he was in the past.
Clad in formal robes that she normally never wore, but was doing so to make her mother happy as she met with her family of the past, she had been sitting by the koi, when her ears perked up at Lan Sizhui’s approach. She swiftly stood and waved at Lan Sizhui, before remembering he didn’t know her yet and tampered down her enthusiasm. “Greetings, biǎo gē,” she said, putting her hands together and bowing her head low, customary when dealing with an older relative in a formal setting. “Please, call me Rina,” she added, smiling wide as she came out of her bow. “Lady Jiang’s my mother.”
So much about this situation was strange. He had never been referred to as biǎo gē, and for a brief moment the surprise was evident on his face. His ability to keep his emotions masked would never be as strong as Hanguan Jun. Confusion quickly turned into a smile though as he walked toward her
He would get used to this. It was similar in some ways to his situation with Lady Wen. They looked close to the same age, but she was part of the same generation as Hanguan Jun. It was a strange situation to navigate, and now he was just on the other side of it.
“Speaking of your mother.” he said gently when he stopped beside the Koi. “How did you arrival go? Are you okay?”
It has been a couple of days since she has shown up, but given how used to her family was of the strange and unusual, there had been very little in fanfare once explanations had been had. Rina's mother had been very welcoming fairly quickly and Rina had settled in well after that.
She explained as much. "I mean, once I told her who I was and my circumstances, she was pretty happy. Surprised, I think, but not a bad surprise." Giving LSZ a smile, she added, "I think she's been thinking about expanding the family already."
Sizhui didn’t know Lady Jiang back in their world, he had never had the opportunity to meet her when he was a child (he was pretty sure), and if he had there was a good chance those memories would be missing. But from what he knew, Lady Jiang wanted a family. “That does not surprise me at all. Lady Jiang will make a wonderful mother.” It was hard to imagine what Jin Ling might have been like had he grown up with mother, or both his parents.
“Tell me about yourself.” he said, beforing adding quickly, “If you don’t mind. I see you’re wearing traditional clothes, but growing up in Vallo had to have an impact on your upbringing.” He had a feeling she was very specifically behaving in a certain way while she was among them in the past.
Truth be told, Rina didn’t love dressing up so formally. It wasn’t something that she had to do until she was a toddler, having been used to pants and shirts before then. Still, her mother never actually pushed her to wear the robes that were so common with her family, and had indulged the area’s and time’s sense of fashion for her daughter.
Still, Rina had wanted to make a good impression on her cousin, so she had donned the robes without complaint.
“She is a wonderful mother. My uncles didn’t raise themselves,” Rina joked, the skin at the corner of her eyes crinkling as she grinned wide. Her grin faded a bit, when she was asked about herself though. Her own backstory was a little sad, though she decided she wasn’t going to get into the details of her biological parents and how they died.
Instead, she focused on her current self. “Well, truth be told, this isn’t what I wear daily,” she said, looking down at her robes and pulling at the sides of them. “It’s not that they’re not beautiful or comfortable, it’s just...Mom didn’t adopt me until I was nearly five. I’m kind of used to jeans and shorts,” she said, with a shrug. “But I’m 19 now and, uh, I’m a werewolf? Surprise?”
It had taken all of a couple of minutes at most for Sizhui to realize the power Lady Jiang held over her brothers after he had seen the three of them together. He grinned at her joke, nodding his head in agreement.
He was no stranger to tragic backstories, or even adoption. He also had no idea how much she knew about that, but it didn’t matter, this was about her. His memories from before he was adopted were fuzzy at best. But a five year old with no injuries to impact memories? He could understand a transition to the customs of their family would be difficult.
He hadn’t been expecting the werewolf part. But his face remained calm, no trace of that surprise visible. There was mythology around animals that could become people, but there was nothing he could think of that translated exactly to werewolves. Sizhui had become more familiar with them since his arrival in Vallo. “You turn into a wolf?” he asked to confirm he was thinking of the right race. “Was that somethin you were born into?”
God, his poker face was pretty good even now, when he was barely older than she was. Suppressing a smile at that, though she failed to completely dim it, she nodded. “Once a month, the moon forces the turn on me. But I’m also capable of turning on my own throughout the rest of the month as well because I was born a werewolf.” Brushing some of her short hair behind her ear, she offered, “We sometimes go hunting together. Me as a wolf, you as you. For fun.”
Some of her fondest memories were of hunting and running through the woods with various members of her family. Her mother always had a picnic waiting for them at the end of it, where they would cook and eat whatever meat they hunted down.
There was an interesting thought. Sizhui missed the Night Hunts, and he doubted the hunting they apparently did in the future was the same. But really any kind of hunting would be better than none, probably.
He had questions about topics of control around werewolves, because he had heard various stories on the topics of werewolves. But that felt like it was approaching rudeness for someone he had just met, even if Rina was familiar with him. “I do miss Night Hunts with the other juniors.” And Wing Ning as well. “That sounds like it is something to look forward to.”
“What do you do? If you are nineteen, are you a student?” Enrolling in universities seems to be a common thing around people their age in Vallo. “What do you study? Or where do you work?”
She had expected all these questions and more. Some of them weren’t new, having been asked about them by her uncles and mother already, but some of them were. “Um, do you know what a conservation activist is?” Rina was slightly more radical than most members of her family, but they were used to her shenanigans in the future. It was still a little nerve wracking to bring up what she did in her spare time to her cousin who had just found out about her, though.
“I know what conservation is, and what an activist is, so I can guess.” he answered with a smile. While he’d never heard the specific term, he could arrive at a logical conclusion. “You...work to protect...places? Or maybe animals?” okay, so he could draw a basic conclusion, but it also seemed possible that this could go many ways, depending on what they were trying to conserve.
Nodding down at one of the walking pathways around the water, Rina said, “Join me for a walk? And I’ll tell you all about my anarchist days and how your gremlin dad encouraged me.”
Germlin dad. That was a new term to refer to Wei Wuxian by, but there was no doubt that was exactly who she meant. The name Lan Wangji and anarchist did not go together. “Anarchist days. I can already imagine how proud Senior Wei must have been.” he mused, before falling into place beside her.