"Why do they call you that?" You ask him one day, the soft grass of the quad ticking the skin of your thighs revealed by your uniform.

You had finally joined him at the prestigious university, your small gap in age separating the two of you after Yingxing had gotten his diploma.

A lot has changed in the time that you had spent apart.

You had been his companion since childhood - his only one, in fact. You were the only one whose company he would continuously allow in his presence while his parents had moulded him into the proper and decorous person he was expected to be.

Now, two years later, you could barely recognize the boy you grew up beside.

His tamed and styled white hair was now an unruly dark blue that fell around his face, streaks of red highlights matching the tie of his attire. His piercings - that he had gotten on both his ears and his lips, to your surprise - were off at the moment, but left behind empty dimples.

You never questioned his physical changes, not seeing the need in bringing them up, but you had a feeling his parents would disapprove if they were aware.

His personality was, to your content, still relatively the same: cold, dutiful, pensive.

It seemed he had grown out of his shell at least a little, though, as he would be greeted ever so often by passing students. However, they did not call him the name that was so familiar on your tongue.

"Blade, I mean."