A/N: Opening quote belongs to Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club).
Such A Night
"Such a night! Always someone falling in on holiday nights. Drunken poets and little children."
China had been playing his fingers along the porcelain walls all evening, bringing it up to sip at the bone-fine rim every now and then ever since the first shadowy veils fell across the late-afternoon skies. Sometime in between here and now, the light, fragrant teas had flowed into the pale translucency of rice wine, then the deeper shades of plum, curling rich and aromatic over his tongue.
He made a sound of appreciation, and it was mirrored by his fellows from where they were settled likewise around the low table whose sweet-treats had been moved to the clear second layer beneath the glass surface currently obscured by long sheets of rice-paper. Every now and then one of the men would tip back his wine and pick up his brush with perfectly still hands, and with a flourish the paper would shine the new smoky-bitterness of fresh ink, whilst the person beside him refilled his cup with a swill of dark purple. Then, he would take a long draught of satisfaction as the others leaned in to inspect his lines, and the next few moments would be filled with the murmur of discussion, until someone else swallowed inspiration, and took up his brush.
This is one of China's favourite times of the year; August the fifteenth, when the moon rose full in all her glory and poets gathered and fell down before her. Gliding a barge down the lake, where the bright lights of many other parties, similarly decked, drifted by with a called exchange of greetings and good-will. Occasionally a child would spot their playfellow, and they would giggle and shout and wave to each other over the dark, glassy gloss of the water.
The combination of the scroll-hung walls and the wine merge together the crashing and breaking of sounds until they're down to an agreeable shirring to his ears, and, reaching for the brush, he half-reflects on how he could hardly be enjoying himself more.
Even so, he doesn't miss the splash.
It comes to him slowly, as if the sound were reaching to someone submerged by water, and when it finally does he merely cocks his head to the side and pauses in his movements, not quite comprehending, and wondering if he really did hear anything at all.
He's vaguely aware of retracting his hand and the swaying feeling of standing up, before he finds himself on the deck, billows of cool air on one side of his face and the warmth of celebrations he can feel on the other, bright, colourful figures dancing to the plucking of entertainers' instruments and the music of laughter. There's no time to revel in it, though, and although the vibrancy of the scene draws him in like a painted opera or a firework display, he makes his way determinedly to the back of the barge, where it was strangely quiet by contrast.
A few times he almost falls; whether from the rocking of the boat, he can't tell.
At first he sees nothing, and almost thinks of dismissing the notion and turning back, but then – then – a surge of jade-white moonlight breaks across the waters, and he can start to distinguish puzzle-pieces of an interconnected shape. A pale hand, a struggle of dark blue clothing, white, wet cheeks.
He isn't sure of what happens next – he only remembers his fingers closing around thickly waterlogged fabric, the shock of sudden cold, the struggle of slippery boards directly beneath his face. Safe, his mind tells him through a haze of confused half-comprehension, and when the relief touches him, he realises that he's far wetter than he'd thought or expected, and his clothes – painstakingly embroidered – are soaked and freezing against his skin.
He has mind enough to look down, and scrape with almost numbed fingers inky black hair from where they clung to a china-pale child's face. Which child had strayed out alone from the safe buzz of the party–?
Oh, Japan.
He still has his arms looped around him, and he wonders whether to tighten them in boundless, mindless gratitude and not let him go, never let him go again and never let him go under, or pick him up and carry him inside to dry them both off and snug him in a fresh change of something warm and dry. Before he can decide, however, he sees rather than feels Japan's fingers clutching at his clothes, and turning to bury his face into the front of his jacket, despite the fact that it must be icy with cold and sodden to go with it.
They stay there for a long time, Japan with his face pressed against the wet fabric, shaking and sobbing his quiet, muffled sorry, sorry, and China looking helplessly down, not knowing what to say, only that he mustn't let Japan go ever again. In the end someone else comes across them, and a pitch of voices are talking and leading them away, and China stumbles blindly as he follows.
It haunts him all through the evening to the following day, and even as the raw fear eventually faded away, it still gasps at the back of the mind every day thereafter, unforgettable as a child (so small) with his mouth opening and closing in dark water, like a desperately drowning fish.
August the fifteenth: he'd been aboard a barge alive with festivities out on deck and peacefully poetic inside; he'd drunk tea and rice and plum wine; he'd written couplets in the finest black ink with a circling of his friends. He'd taken bites of mooncakes with sweet lotus-paste fillings; he'd dined on pink-fleshed trout and miniature steamed dumplings with sides so clear that he could see the little globes of prawn stuffing inside. He'd talked easy conversation and patted the heads of children and plucked for them the treats from the platters they couldn't reach. He'd danced, and he'd laughed.
And Japan had almost drowned.