The Fox Demon Came to Repay the Monk Before His Vows novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Cook Knows

Brother Zhiyin feeds the fox and keeps his secret, the dawn cairn and its peach make the monk snap, and in the dark sutra library the monk kneels and learns what his mouth is for. The Warden of Exorcists arrives a day early.

Yanzhi woke before dawn with a fox's instinct for being watched, and the thing watching him was a plate of steamed buns.

A round-faced monk sat on an upturned bucket in the doorway of the woodshed, holding the plate out with both hands.

He had a gap in his front teeth and flour up to both elbows.

"You're the fox," he said cheerfully.

Yanzhi sat up in the straw so fast that he hit his head on a rafter.

"I'm a pilgrim," he said, rubbing his skull.

"Of course you are. I'm Zhiyin, I do the cooking. Eat."

"You smell like sulfur, so you found the hot spring, and you were up all night. He ate the whole pot, you know."

"What pot?"

"Your rice."

Zhiyin lowered his voice, delighted.

"Every grain. He scraped the bottom with his finger. I've fed that man for seven years, and he has never once finished a bowl."

Yanzhi took a bun and stared at it.

"You aren't afraid of me," he said.

"Should I be?"

"I'm a fox spirit. I've got three hundred years of mischief in me."

"You've got a love bite on your neck," said Zhiyin kindly. "Eat your bun."

Yanzhi slapped a hand to his throat.

There was nothing there, and he realized he had just been tricked by a cook.

Zhiyin laughed so hard that he had to put the plate down.

Yanzhi ate the bun anyway, because it was extremely good, and because nobody had fed him since the day his mother died.

The sky was going grey when he slipped out and followed the sound of a broom.

It came from the far end of the orchard, past the rows of peach trees, where the temple wall met the mountain.

Yanzhi crouched behind a trunk and looked.

Jingmo was sweeping a small round clearing under the biggest tree, in a grey robe with the sleeves pushed up.

In the middle of the clearing stood a low pile of river stones, stacked into a mound no higher than a man's knee.

Jingmo swept every leaf from around it, one stroke at a time, and then he put the broom aside and knelt.

He set down a bowl of white rice.

Beside the bowl he set a single peach, soft and gold.

Then he laid his palm flat on the stones and bowed his head, and he stayed that way so long that the light changed.

Yanzhi had never seen a body so still, or so heavy with something it wasn't saying.

He should have gone away.

He didn't know what made him step on the twig.

Jingmo's head came up, and he looked straight at him.

Yanzhi had seen men afraid, and angry, and ashamed, and this was all three at once, with the lid nailed down.

"Not that," Jingmo said.

His voice was low and rough, and Yanzhi took half a step back.

"I only..."

"Not that. Not this place. You may go anywhere else on the mountain."

"Whose is it?"

"Get out of the orchard."

Yanzhi went.

He didn't look back until he reached the wall, and when he did, Jingmo was still kneeling with both hands on the stones.

The peach glowed in the grey light.

Yanzhi spent the day being useful with the very limited tools he had.

He carried water until the bucket handle left a groove in his palm.

He swept the woodshed, and then the yard in front of it.

Then he swept a path that Jingmo would have to walk, and Jingmo walked it without looking at him.

He walked it three times that day.

Each time his eyes went straight ahead and his ears went red.

"You're doing wonderfully," Zhiyin told him at the well, handing him a rag.

"He hasn't looked at a single thing in the yard since noon. He's looked at the ground, the sky, and the wall."

"I'm trying to repay him."

"By being underfoot?"

"By being where he can see me."

"He's seen you," said the cook gravely. "That is exactly the problem."

The sutra library stood at the back of the oldest hall, a long room of shelves and rolled scrolls that smelled of dust and camphor.

Yanzhi went there after the evening gong, because Zhiyin had said that was where Jingmo went when he wasn't being cold.

He told himself he was going to apologize for the orchard.

Jingmo was alone at a long desk under a single lamp, copying a page in small black characters.

His brush stopped when Yanzhi came in.

"The cook told you," he said, without turning.

"The cook tells everyone everything."

"Then close the door."

Yanzhi closed it.

The click of the latch sounded very loud.

Jingmo put the brush in its rest and turned on the bench, and his face was calm and his hands were not.

"About the orchard," he said.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm the one who should be sorry. I shouldn't have raised my voice."

He looked at his hands.

"I have been thinking about last night all day."

"So have I."

"There are books here," said Jingmo. "They are meant as warnings. I read them again this afternoon."

Yanzhi made a small noise.

"The warnings were very detailed."

"Were they?"

"I think," said Jingmo, "that I can do one part of it with my mouth."

Yanzhi stopped breathing.

"Sit on the desk," Jingmo added, and Yanzhi understood that the most frightening man on Mount Hanyun had made up his mind.

He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk among the scrolls, with his feet dangling and his heart in his throat.

"Come here, then," he said. "I'd beg you."

Jingmo rose, and the lamp threw his shadow up the wall.

He knelt on the floor between Yanzhi's knees, and Yanzhi forgot every clever thing he had meant to say.

"Tell me," Jingmo said, and put his hands on Yanzhi's thighs.

They were so big that they covered most of them.

"Take my robes off," Yanzhi whispered. "All the way."

Jingmo did it slowly, gathering silk in his fists, until Yanzhi was bare and hard on the old desk with the scrolls under his palms.

Jingmo took his time looking, the way he did everything, and Yanzhi felt the weight of his eyes like a touch.

"You're beautiful," said Jingmo, and the plain way he said it nearly finished Yanzhi. "I have no better word. I'm not a poet."

"Put your mouth on my cock."

"Where?"

"Right on the head. Take me in."

Jingmo kissed the inside of his thigh first, and then he dragged his lips higher.

Yanzhi clutched the edge of the desk and said whatever he could think of to hold himself together.

"Monk. Monk. Please."

"I'm listening."

"Higher. Higher, I swear to every god..."

Jingmo's mouth closed hot and wet over his cock, and the whole world narrowed to heat.

It was clumsy at first.

Then it wasn't, because Jingmo learned things at once, and he sucked the shaft down his throat and did it again.

Yanzhi cried out and caught Jingmo's bare head in both hands.

The smooth, hot skin under his palms undid him completely.

"Yes. Suck me like that. Slower. Oh, you wicked, wicked man..."

Jingmo hummed around his cock, a low sound, and Yanzhi felt the vibration all the way down his spine.

He was on the edge within minutes, and Jingmo knew it.

Jingmo looked up with his dark eyes locked on Yanzhi's while his mouth worked the shaft.

Yanzhi had never in his life been so seen.

"Don't look at me like that," he gasped, "or I'll cum..."

Jingmo did not look away.

He pressed his tongue flat against the underside of the head, firm and slow, and Yanzhi came hard down his throat crying "Monk, Monk."

The lamp flame trembled, and a scroll rolled off the desk onto the floor.

Jingmo swallowed every pulse of his cum and did not draw back.

He stayed where he was, breathing hard, with his forehead against Yanzhi's stomach and Yanzhi's shaking hands on his head.

"I didn't know," he said. "I didn't know it could feel like that, even to give."

"Learn it again tomorrow."

"I intend to."

He lifted his face, and his mouth was wet and red, and a laugh came out of Yanzhi that sounded almost like crying.

Then the bells on the gate began to ring, hard and fast.

They were not the slow ward-bells but the brass alarm.

Jingmo went rigid.

His head turned toward the sound, and all the heat drained out of him.

He was on his feet with his sleeve held across Yanzhi before Yanzhi had even sat up.

"That's the guest bell," he said. "That's a Warden's bell."

Somewhere on the stairs below, in the dark, a voice called out in a cultured tone, lightly amused, using the temple's old greeting.

"We are early," it said. "I do hope that's no trouble."

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