It is the cold, ultimately, that wakes him. Jin Guangyao has never tolerated it well, and lacks his sworn brothers' peerless cultivation which renders most environmental discomforts moot. Planning visits to the Cloud Recesses always meant ensuring that he packed an additional under-layer for those crisp mornings even in the spring or fall where the ground was covered with frost or snow. Foggily, as sleep recedes, he wonders how he could possibly have forgotten something so essential--

--but then he opens his eyes to the darkness of a forest canopy overhead, and sits bolt upright amid a pile of mouldering leaves, scrabbling backwards across the dirt and away from something medium-sized and furry that had been nosing at his feet.

His sudden movement sends the mystery animal scampering away into the woods. Jin Guangyao stares after it with wide eyes and his pulse rabbiting in his throat, drops a hand towards his waist where his sword usually rests, and finds only his own chilled skin.

What a way to become aware of one's own nakedness. He flushes with instinctive humiliation, even without an audience to witness his shame, but pragmatism ultimately wins out. If the choice is between retaining his dignity by remaining alone and unarmed in the wilderness, or swallowing his pride and finding help while shamefully without a stitch of clothing to his name, he knows which one he will choose.

And so he gets to his feet, marshals his courage, and sets off into the woods in search of someone--anyone--who might be able to provide him with some assistance.

The interior of the boarding house is bustling with activity as newcomers struggle to get themselves oriented to their new circumstances. Jin Guangyao's struggle is a comparatively short one; he is a survivor, first and foremost, and adaptability is a skill he cultivated (hah) while young. And so, after finding himself some simple clothing to preserve his modesty, he has situated himself in an unassuming corner close to the coal stove to warm his hands, eat the simple fare that has been provided to him, and commit the faces of all the other newcomers he can see to memory.

He's perfectly polite and cordial to anyone who meets his eyes of course, smiling the inoffensive and closed-mouth little smile of a harmless little guy just trying to keep his head down. (The best defence isn't always a good offence: it's never being perceived as a threat in the first place.)

Once he's eaten--and regained some feeling in his chilly fingers and toes--he slips unobtrusively from the common area and upstairs, seeking out an unoccupied room to claim for his own. Except--well, perhaps he shouldn't have lingered quite so long in front of the coal stove trying to warm up. All of the rooms are occupied.

He pauses outside of a room that has left the door ajar and, after stealing a glance inside to be sure that there's still one bed available, lightly knocks. "Please, forgive this humble one for the intrusion," he begins, reaching for the courtesy language that is second-nature to him at this point. "Would you have space in your room for another? It seems that all the other beds have been claimed."

The pair of women on the stage with their hands busily occupied beneath each other's sheer skirts are mesmerizing to Jin Guangyao... though probably not for the same reasons as the other spectators, who drink in each suggestive flex of the wrist and bodily shudder with rapt attention. No, this is quite restrained in comparison to the scenes young Meng Yao grew up around as the only son of a sex worker, scrubbing floors and bringing food and drinks to patrons within the brothel where his mother was forced to serve.

It's that this scene is happening in the middle of the street. And this very morning, one of those two women cheerily gifted him with the warm cloak that currently keeps him insulated against the biting cold. She has an ordinary and respectable vocation as a seamstress that would not be so out of place back in Lanling City. Yet there she is, not only making a display of her own body and pleasure, but revelling in it, in a manner that is totally alien to Jin Guangyao.

He understands, of course. He has had things explained to him by the locals. Intellectually, he grasps the necessity as well as the wisdom of what he is witnessing. That doesn't change the frisson of shame that cuts through him when he realizes what he is doing. Watching this scene, is he any better than one of his mother's johns? Is he any better than his own father?

('What else can I expect from the son of a prostitute?' Nie Mingjue had shouted at him. Never had such words cut him more deeply than when they came from Chifeng-zun.)

He turns abruptly and walks quickly away from the display, flushed with colour and other distracting sensations that he hasn't allowed himself to experience since he was old enough to realize what they meant. (What other people might make them mean, for him.) He is so caught up in his own racing thoughts that he does not look where he is going--

--which is how he ends up walking right into someone else. The impact is pretty solid, too, and instinctively he grasps hold of the stranger's arm to steady himself.

The warmth of another person under his touch, though, is too much, and he jerks his hand back as though burned. "My apologies," he stammers, risks a glance upward into this stranger's eyes, and then away again.