In spite of their similar color preferences, Yan Hui is nothing like Wei Wuxian.
He reminds you all too much of yourself, really. Sour-faced, temperamental and stern - though you're sure frustration at his inability to express himself forms a part of that temper. He's good enough to handle day to day conversation now, and has been working steadily on building his vocabulary. He takes writing lessons with Jin Ling, showing none of the irritation that another might have at sharing lessons with a small child as an adult; and anyway, the lessons are mostly to get Jin Ling used to handling a brush, something that Yan Hui apparently needs to learn as well.
It isn't that he can't write. He just can't write with a brush. On the day he finally gets fed up with it, he goes down to the butcher's and comes back with a sack of goose pinions, and sits down for two hours cutting the tips off them with an impressive delicacy and eye for detail, even if it seems unpracticed in the way that most of the things you can hire someone to do are.
This is also how you learn that Yan Hui is ambidextrous, as he shows up to lessons the next day with his goose feathers, and every time he brushes a character with his right hand, he follows it up with scribbled notes in his own language in his left, the tip of the feather leaving narrow lines of ink across the page. The way he holds the feather is completely different from a brush, but somehow the tight lines of looping characters are never smeared.
Yan Hui isn't much like Wei Wuxian, because you can't imagine Wei Wuxian putting nearly so much effort into learning. It came easily to him, like so many other things. He never learned how to work for his knowledge.
Yan Hui works, and he works, and he works. Not quite silently, but quietly enough that the occasional curse isn't enough to disturb you when he joins you for paperwork in the afternoons while Jin Ling is sleeping. Because the pace of a child's lessons isn't fast enough to satisfy him, isn't enough to express what needs expressing.
To be fair, it is also frustrating for you. However, even with the hour or two a day you set aside for trying to help the boy with your language, he is somehow making things go more efficiently. You teach him the characters for the other sects, and he sorts your correspondence. He watches Jin Ling, he gets you food and fresh ink and saves you a handful of minutes every day.
It's servant work that most cultivators would be ashamed to do. When you finally ask about it, after ten minutes of frustration at trying to express the concept of a lie to someone who knows what it is but doesn't have the vocabulary to use the damn word, Yan Hui goes quiet. And then in his limited words, he finally says:
"You don't say I can't, won't understand. You find time. You pull time out from between the walls and still don't have enough, but you find time."
And... Well, you can't very well argue with that.
However. However.
The times when Yan Hui decides to remind you of Wei Wuxian are always the most fucked up, painful, and inconvenient ones.
SOME TIME LATER
He reminds you all too much of yourself, really. Sour-faced, temperamental and stern - though you're sure frustration at his inability to express himself forms a part of that temper. He's good enough to handle day to day conversation now, and has been working steadily on building his vocabulary. He takes writing lessons with Jin Ling, showing none of the irritation that another might have at sharing lessons with a small child as an adult; and anyway, the lessons are mostly to get Jin Ling used to handling a brush, something that Yan Hui apparently needs to learn as well.
It isn't that he can't write. He just can't write with a brush. On the day he finally gets fed up with it, he goes down to the butcher's and comes back with a sack of goose pinions, and sits down for two hours cutting the tips off them with an impressive delicacy and eye for detail, even if it seems unpracticed in the way that most of the things you can hire someone to do are.
This is also how you learn that Yan Hui is ambidextrous, as he shows up to lessons the next day with his goose feathers, and every time he brushes a character with his right hand, he follows it up with scribbled notes in his own language in his left, the tip of the feather leaving narrow lines of ink across the page. The way he holds the feather is completely different from a brush, but somehow the tight lines of looping characters are never smeared.
Yan Hui isn't much like Wei Wuxian, because you can't imagine Wei Wuxian putting nearly so much effort into learning. It came easily to him, like so many other things. He never learned how to work for his knowledge.
Yan Hui works, and he works, and he works. Not quite silently, but quietly enough that the occasional curse isn't enough to disturb you when he joins you for paperwork in the afternoons while Jin Ling is sleeping. Because the pace of a child's lessons isn't fast enough to satisfy him, isn't enough to express what needs expressing.
To be fair, it is also frustrating for you. However, even with the hour or two a day you set aside for trying to help the boy with your language, he is somehow making things go more efficiently. You teach him the characters for the other sects, and he sorts your correspondence. He watches Jin Ling, he gets you food and fresh ink and saves you a handful of minutes every day.
It's servant work that most cultivators would be ashamed to do. When you finally ask about it, after ten minutes of frustration at trying to express the concept of a lie to someone who knows what it is but doesn't have the vocabulary to use the damn word, Yan Hui goes quiet. And then in his limited words, he finally says:
"You don't say I can't, won't understand. You find time. You pull time out from between the walls and still don't have enough, but you find time."
And... Well, you can't very well argue with that.
However. However.
The times when Yan Hui decides to remind you of Wei Wuxian are always the most fucked up, painful, and inconvenient ones.