Summary: Once, when she'd been very young, she had been introduced to the young master face to face - only once. Ling, Lan Fan, and a swordfight.

Lan Fan was ashamed to realise that she rarely paid attention in her battles as she did in this one.

Real fights rarely evoked urgency in her, due to the (naturally) excellent training provided by the Yao clan, and practise fights were often a matter of careful repetition. In this fight every move needed careful calculation; nothing must hurt, she must not become too eager, she must not allow reflexive anger at the times her opponent scored a hit or she might allow herself to...

Her sword's point landed at his throat: blasphemy and catastrophe at once.

Lan Fan, against all training, froze. She had never wished to spar with the young master - it was not proper at all, he had tutors for such things - but he'd insisted, and now—

"Hey, not bad!" said Ling. He smiled, letting his hold on his own sword appear relaxed and tilting his chin down to study the length of the blade pointed at him, and the movement of muscles in his neck pricked onto the edge of Lan Fan's sword.

Lan Fan was glad that his noise of discontent covered the tiny sound that escaped her throat, but still her hand would not move, clamped in place by dread and hours of training. If someone were to walk into the young master's private training grounds and witness this sight, her punishment would be the greatest she'd ever received, and she'd go to it willingly because she deserved it ... and Ling was still smiling as if it were a game she could only keep trying to understand.

She barely perceived the movement of his free hand, as she was keeping her eyes on his face. This would have been too gross a mistake to make in any other case, but she couldn't fight the young master properly, and she only realised what he'd done when the whistle of flying blades went past her ears. By then it was too late, and Ling had targeted what Lan Fan suddenly realised was a great weakness.

The blades were close, distracting; terrifying, because Ling had thrown them to cut through the straps of her mask. They were thrown with some skill and a great deal of luck, and some whistled past to cut her hair raggedly and thump into walls behind her, some sliced into the cheeks of her mask to slip out again, and some slid through their target, so that the mask fell to the grass with them.

Once, when she'd been very young, she had been introduced to the young master face to face. Only once.

Ling gave a pleased noise and leapt forwards to take advantage out of his opponent's distraction. His sword flashed out, and was met with a near whirlwind of defence: Lan Fan's back was turned to his every movement, and no strike was allowed to reach her, because her sword crashed into his every moment in a block.

Then Ling jumped backwards, crouching some five metres away from Lan Fan. They were both motionless. "Shall we call off the training session?" he asked, sounding baffled, and Lan Fan knew that he might as well have asked outright why she was shaking.

"Lan Fan?"

He moved towards her, and even under such circumstances as these, it would show the uttermost disrespect to his wishes to move away. So Lan Fan stood still, with hardly a chance to draw a fortifying breath, and then he was before her. Her head was bowed, as was proper.

"Are you all right? I know you have a lot more training than me, so if you're already tired... Lan Fan?"

"I am well, young master. Thank you for your concern."

"Are you sure?" He sort of ducked, trying to catch her expression under the fall of her hair ... and she immediately straightened, looking forward, so that he would not have to strike such a comical pose.

It was then that he seemed to realise what he'd done. "Hello there," said Ling. He was staring.

Lan Fan nearly clapped her hands over her exposed face. To keep from that embarrassment, she nearly clenched them in her tunic to anchor them - and then she stood very still, berating herself for lax discipline. She was a trained guard of the Yao clan and one of the young master's trusted companions, and it was as if all her diplomacy was lost. She couldn't stop the shaking. "I apologise, young master."

Ling shrugged, a little helplessly, and then - he winked.

"You're blushing," he said.

Lan Fan looked at him, for a moment, as he stood with his mouth slack, looking foolish. She realised that her own bafflement was all over her face too ... and that the breeze brushed now-ragged ends of hair across her cheeks, that Ling stood close, and that he had let go of his sword when he came to her, though she still held her own and had pointed it at him mere minutes before.

If someone were to walk into the young master's private training grounds and witness this sight...

Lan Fan fell into a bow, her back a perfect parallel to the ground. "My mask, Master Ling - I shall have to repair it. I - may I excuse myself-"

"Oh! I mean, sure. I mean - go ahead."

Redness suffused her cheeks and her mind, leaving too much air in her head and dizzying her as she ran. She held the useless mask up so that it at least covered her from the nose down. It was the day that master Ling saw her face, and she was nearly tripping on oxygen; Lan Fan ducked her head lower behind the mask as she ran the corridors of the house.

Ling watched the door Lan Fan had run through, his head tilted in a considering way. Later, he would realise that his thoughts were unfair, and that the strange concept of 'tact' might be necessary in this case, but just then he wondered when he could get rid of that mask again.