Inside the silent, deserted library, the fresh, herbaceous gentian fragrance displaced the old smells of paper, ink, dust, and aged wood, surrounding his beloved completely.
Yugong Zhaoye’s eyes were covered, leaving only the lower half of his pale, narrow face exposed. He looked unusually gentle, almost faintly easy to bully. The corners of his lips hovered on the verge of a smile, relaxed and entirely free of their usual sharpness, enough to inspire dangerous ideas—perhaps one kiss would not get a person beaten to death.
The shameless rogue lost his mind and leaned closer.
Yet Yugong Zhaoye seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. He precisely raised a hand, pinched Wei Fu’s lips shut into a flat little duck bill, and sneered.
“Another charge added.”
The rogue: “Mmfmm!”
“I’ll count to three. We let go at the same time.” The hateful curve of Yugong Zhaoye’s lips became even more obvious. “Three, two, one.”
The instant they released one another, Wei Fu moved with lightning speed and planted a quick kiss on Yugong Zhaoye’s fingertips before he could withdraw them.
Yugong Zhaoye: “…”
“Your Highness is so young and handsome. How could I possibly feel at ease when you’re traveling abroad?” Wei Fu slipped his other arm around Yugong Zhaoye’s waist and turned him around. Prepared to be beaten for it, he declared resolutely, “Fine, if you refuse to give me a proper status, then at least leave me some token to remember you by. That way, when you think of me in a foreign land, you’ll still have something to comfort yourself with. As for me, sleeping alone every night and weeping beneath the moon, I can only cling to these memories for warmth…”
The longer he spoke, the more tragically heartbroken he sounded. For one dazed instant, Yugong Zhaoye felt as though he had been conscripted to build the Great Wall and was unlikely ever to see home again, while Wei Fu looked ready to arrive the moment he laid the final brick and cry the entire wall down.
Ever since the previous night, when Wei Fu had forcibly shortened the distance between them until only the thinnest sheet of mutually understood paper remained, Yugong Zhaoye had blocked and stalled with all his might to prevent those final words from being spoken aloud.
They had not seen one another for an entire day and night since.
Yet now, meeting again so suddenly, Yugong Zhaoye did not even have time to feel awkward before falling into profound self-doubt.
Had he really managed to stop Wei Fu from saying it that night?
Had he somehow lost part of his memory? Why was Wei Fu behaving so brazenly, as though he had already succeeded?
“What exactly are you worried about?”
Yugong Zhaoye irritably rubbed his dusty hand twice across Wei Fu’s cheek. Under Wei Fu’s puzzled and aggrieved stare, he calmly explained, “My hand was covered in dust.”
Wei Fu froze for a second, then burst out laughing. Deliberately offering him the other cheek, he asked, “So one slap and one sweet treat? What about this side?”
“Get lost.” Yugong Zhaoye deeply felt that Wei Fu had become extraordinarily cunning after growing up, nowhere near as lovable as he had been as a child. “Who slapped you?”
Wei Fu was not annoyed in the slightest. Sweet delight pooled at the corners of his smiling eyes, as though merely looking at Yugong Zhaoye already made him immensely happy. His gaze was so soft and warm that it almost made a person involuntarily wonder whether they had treated him too harshly. “What brings Your Highness to Donghua Pavilion?”
The second half of the question was written plainly in the high arch of his brows:
Did you come looking for me?
Yugong Zhaoye answered with complete honesty. “Young Master Wei, when someone comes to a library, what else do you think they’re here for besides reading?”
Wei Fu silently mouthed, Secret affair.
Yugong Zhaoye pretended he was about to smear more dust across his face. Wei Fu laughed softly, hugged him, and whispered intimately, “Fine. I came to see Your Highness.”
“The court pays you a salary, and this is how you repay it.” Yugong Zhaoye poked him lightly, putting on a stern front. “One of these days I’m going to report you to your emperor.”
As for exactly what this referred to, Prince Yugong might possess the broad Longsha tolerance for novel, outrageous, and even bizarre things, but he still cared about his dignity. He neither spelled it out nor seriously struggled against Wei Fu’s clingy behavior.
It was like a scholar threatening an increasingly brazen fox spirit by saying, I’m going to tell your sworn elder brother.The fox spirit was not actually frightened, but he feared the scholar might become angry and leave, so he immediately put on an understanding, gentle expression. “What is Your Highness looking for? Perhaps I can help.”
Yugong Zhaoye’s first thought was, What is there to help with? I’m looking at a map, not trying to read an unknown language.
Yet somehow, when the words reached his lips, they became, “Let’s find somewhere more spacious. It’s dusty here. Be careful you don’t choke.”
The two moved to a long table beneath the window and spread open two map scrolls. One depicted all of Dongyu, the other all of Yanyuan. Neither was particularly detailed, containing only rough markings for the major mountains, rivers, and cities.
No country would casually allow detailed maps of its own territory to circulate abroad, and Yanyuan guarded such information from Longsha especially strictly. The map before them had been obtained more than a decade earlier, when relations between the two countries had not yet deteriorated so badly.
Both maps depicted the border lake in only a few rough strokes, so simplistic they looked like a child’s doodles. Yugong Zhaoye aligned the two maps along the border and studied them with a frown.
“This place…”
Wei Fu asked, “What about it?”
“It looks familiar.” Yugong Zhaoye circled the area with one fingertip and tapped the middle of the lake. “I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere before… Tch. I can’t remember.”
Wei Fu lowered his gaze to the yellowed paper. The winding lines imprinted themselves into his mind, becoming countless pages and documents flashing rapidly past. After closing his eyes in thought for a moment, he said softly, “The map Xie Youlan brought out that day wasn’t the same as either of these. It was also somewhat different from the maps I saw in the Imperial Archives. Your Highness, help me find some paper and brushes.”
Xie Youlan’s map had probably been specially commissioned. The portion depicting Dongyu had been extremely detailed, yet Wei Fu had only glanced at it a few times.
Could he really have memorized the entire thing?
Although Yugong Zhaoye often thought Wei Fu was childish and far too lively, he had never once doubted his actual abilities. He immediately found xuan paper, brushes, and ink on a nearby shelf, went downstairs for water, and personally ground half an inkstone of ink for him.
Wei Fu dipped a fine brush into the ink. He had already worked everything out in his mind while waiting. Without the slightest hesitation, he began drawing, smoothly sketching the broad outlines of lakes, mountains, and borders before carefully marking the nearby cities and their positions. His movements were so practiced that it looked as though the finished map already existed in his mind and all he needed to do was transfer it onto paper.
Yet Wei Fu had never once visited the area. If Xie Youlan had not mentioned it, he might never have paid the place any attention at all. Reproducing an unfamiliar region by hand after merely glancing at several maps sounded more absurd than boasting one could fly into the heavens.
Mapmaking was nothing like ordinary drawing. It had to follow the Six Principles of Cartography, accounting for such things as scale, orientation, distance, and elevation. A tiny discrepancy on paper could become hundreds of li on the ground, shifting a mountain straight into a river. Getting the rough outline and cardinal directions correct was nowhere near enough.
Wei Fu finished in one continuous flow. Lifting the paper, he gave it a light shake and immediately cautioned, “This can’t be treated as a proper official map. It’s only a composite reference map I filled in based on several maps I’ve seen before. Your Highness should use it for reference only.”
Yugong Zhaoye accepted it and studied it carefully. The Dongyu portion was close to what he vaguely remembered from Xie Youlan’s map, while the Yanyuan portion probably came from old maps stored in Xiling’s Imperial Archives, with Wei Fu filling in the blank regions around the border.
Merely from having seen those maps years ago, he could reproduce them by hand.
Precision aside, that memory alone was terrifyingly rare.
If word of this ever spread, Yanyuan’s emperor would not be the only one losing sleep. Every emperor beneath Heaven would wake in the middle of the night and start calculating how far the assassins they had dispatched might already have traveled.
Yugong Zhaoye glanced at him. “Photographic memory?”
“A trivial little skill.” Wei Fu replied modestly, “Not as difficult as drawing talismans.”
Yugong Zhaoye: “?”
“You…” He chose his words with extreme care. “Besides me… have you ever done something like this in front of anyone else?”
Wei Fu pretended not to understand. “What sort of thing? Having a secret affair? Of course you’re the only one, Your Highness. How could you doubt my sincere feelings?”
Yugong Zhaoye: “…”
“Be serious.” He reprimanded him softly, somewhat awkwardly. “Stop changing the subject.”
“You’re the only one.”
Wei Fu continued smiling openly at him as he repeated himself in a gentle voice. “I’ve already handed you my sincere heart, Your Highness. Now it’s your turn to decide. In this lifetime, are you going to let me go again?”
His weakness was plainly in Yugong Zhaoye’s hands, his life and freedom dependent upon another person’s whim, yet somehow Wei Fu carried himself with the force of someone doing the threatening and coercing. Yugong Zhaoye almost felt cornered and briefly could not tell who the real bully was.
“What lifetime, bedtime, blankets, and pillows?” Yugong Zhaoye said irritably, deliberately pretending to mishear him. “Who’s stopping you from leaving? If you’re sleepy, go back and sleep.”
Wei Fu secretly delighted in how adorable he found this. This peerless, unstoppable blade would pretend to be obtuse whenever he heard something he did not want to answer, like a small animal playing dead in front of its natural predator.
Outwardly, however, he displayed obvious disappointment. The corners of his eyes, his lips, and his invisible tail all drooped together.
“Oh.”
Yugong Zhaoye genuinely could not understand what he had to be disappointed about. “What exactly were you expecting?”
“Your Highness is always saying you’ll throw me into prison.” Wei Fu lowered his voice shyly and leaned closer to whisper, “I thought maybe you were planning to lock me up yourself, personally keep watch over me, never leave my side, and… this and that…”
Yugong Zhaoye did not dare listen any further, afraid he might genuinely murder Xie Youlan the next day.
Maintaining perfect composure, he backed three quick steps away and pushed open the window.
“If there’s nothing else, I’ll be leaving. Farewell.”
Wei Fu: “Your Highness, that’s the window. You’re jumping off the building.”
Yugong Zhaoye replied calmly, “No need to see me out.”
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