“Xuan Heng.” The moment I entered the study, I summoned Xuan Heng, one of the Seven Shadow Guards who secretly protected me.
“This subordinate is here.” Neither the windows nor the doors had opened, and no one could have seen where the man came from. Yet within that completely sealed room, another person had somehow appeared from thin air. He knelt respectfully and waited for my orders.
The Seven Shadow Guards held no official posts and had never shown themselves publicly. Apart from me, no one knew they existed, much less what they looked like. And beyond protecting me, their greater strengths lay in gathering intelligence and assassination. For years, they had done both cleanly and efficiently. They were the real reason I could spend all those years appearing frivolous and irresponsible on the surface while quietly removing opponents and consolidating my power. Of course, An Yin’s arrival had made that force even more formidable.
“Investigate someone for me. Ning Xuan. I want everything there is to know about him.”
“Yes.” By the time the word faded, the room was empty again. Just as no one knew how he had arrived, no one knew how he had left.
It was a habit of mine. Every person in Prince Rong’s Residence, even servants whose names I could not remember, even those who did nothing more than wash clothes or boil water, had their background investigated thoroughly. I would not leave behind even the smallest opening that someone else might exploit.
Setting down my teacup, I knew I should wait until I had learned his background clearly before taking any further action. Yet my feet seemed to have developed a will of their own and stopped obeying me. More frightening still, my mind seemed perfectly willing to indulge them.
There was still an enormous pile of memorials gathered from every region sitting on my desk. There were still countless plans that needed refining and schemes that needed arranging. There was still… Yet my mind was completely empty, holding only one very simple thought: I wanted to see him. I wanted to know what he was doing right now. Nothing more.
Instinct told me that this kind of abnormality was dangerous, especially when directed toward someone whose background remained unknown. But perhaps my life had simply been too dull and unchanging all these years. The occasional variable, something filled with uncertainty, imagination, and challenge, only became more irresistible. It was difficult to explain the contradiction, yet I accepted it almost instinctively.
I went to the library looking for him, but only the other two pages assigned there with him were present. They told me he was by the lake. I warned them not to tell Ning Xuan that I had come looking for him, and both nodded frantically, frightened into silence like chicks pecking at rice.
Come to think of it, the first time I met him he had also been crouched beside the lake fussing over books. It was the same now, except I was less impatient and had more patience to observe him carefully. His cheeks puffed up with irritation. The way he glared at a page as though facing a mortal enemy. The way he could mutter endlessly to himself even while staring at nothing more than a book.
I was not someone whose emotions readily showed on my face, much less someone cheerful or innocent. Yet I did not dislike such a simple, bright smile. For one instant, I even had the absurd illusion that he might illuminate my life.
A sudden playful impulse seized me, and I had always been someone willing to indulge my desires. I crept closer without making a sound, bent at the waist, lowered my head, and shouted, “Hey!”
Riiip!
Not only did he freeze, even I stared stupidly. It was genuinely remarkable for a person to be this clumsy. Watching the book tear apart right on cue, I understood for the first time how holding back laughter could actually cause internal injuries. With his temper, though, he should explode any moment now.
Sure enough, the little creature who bristled the moment anyone touched him made me realize several things for the first time. Someone beside me shouting and losing his temper was not necessarily intolerable. Trying to coax someone into a better mood did not always require weighing advantages and disadvantages before reluctantly doing it. And being berated to my face, even cursed outright, did not necessarily make me fly into a rage or feel that my dignity had been destroyed.
“Damn it! I’ve finally figured out why nothing good ever happens whenever I run into you! You’re a jinx! A born jinx!!”
If Mother Empress and Father Emperor heard someone say that to me, they would probably faint from anger.
I held back my laughter and tried my best to look innocent.
“Do you have any idea how serious it is to tear one of these books?” His face went black. Shoulders hunched and neck stiff, he looked exactly like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. For all his bluster, it was mostly thunder without rain, leaving him only able to panic helplessly. “Copying books is exhausting! There’s barely anything decent to eat around here in the first place, so stop adding pointless work and wasting my precious energy! Yesterday you stepped on me and made me copy books all night, and I still have one left! Then today, out of nowhere, what the hell did you have to yell for? Look at this! Now I have another book to copy!”
I had memorized practically every book in the residence years ago, so I almost never set foot inside the library. Combined with the amount of time I spent frequenting places of pleasure, it naturally left people with the impression that I was a spoiled young wastrel obsessed with wine and beauty. That image was exactly what I wanted, though to some degree it had not even required deliberate effort. Because of my own attitude, the residence had never considered the library particularly important. Every month, a few new books were brought in simply to keep up appearances. I had never imagined the work here could apparently be this serious. It was only one torn book, yet he was panicking as though disaster had struck.
“Is this book really that important? If you don’t want to copy it, then don’t.” I was actually telling the truth. There were things I had left unsaid, but from the way his face became even darker, I knew he had misunderstood me…
“You bastard, you’re definitely waiting for Steward Tang to punish me so you can stand off to the side and laugh! You people have no loyalty at all. You just go wherever the wind blows and watch everyone else make fools of themselves!” He glared at me, trying to look vicious with his teeth clenched, completely unaware that puffing out his cheeks while forcing himself to look fierce only made me want to thoroughly torment him. “I don’t care. Whoever broke it is responsible. I’m not copying another word. If you don’t fix it, and Steward Tang finds out, or some master suddenly gets a whim one day and decides he wants to read this particular book, then even after I die, I’ll drag you down with me!”
“I don’t mind. Wouldn’t that mean we’d live and die together? I didn’t realize you were already thinking that far ahead~ Although I doubt the master will ever read that book again, if you think it’s necessary, I certainly wouldn’t mind staying up with you tonight and copying it by candlelight~” I was delighted. He had practically handed me a perfectly legitimate excuse. What luck, without my even having to search for one.
Watching him transform in an instant from a vicious little beast into a startled kitten, I might genuinely have burst out laughing if years of upbringing within the imperial family had not taught me better self-control.
He blinked at me, eyes shining with such pitiful wariness that he lacked only the words don’t come any closer. After grumbling and mumbling for a long while, he finally asked with extreme caution, “You… haven’t woken up yet?”
I smiled without answering. I rather enjoyed the sense of superiority that came from this little cat-and-mouse game. At the very least, I had no intention of ending it early.
Just as I had imagined. Beautiful, innocent, quick-tempered, yet adorable too.
“What exactly are you doing here? Don’t you have duties?” The little cat, embarrassed into irritation after all my teasing, found a thoroughly ridiculous question to change the subject.
“You care that much about whether I’m here?”
“…”
There it was again. Everything he thought appeared plainly on his face without the slightest attempt to hide it. It was not a matter of whether he knew how. He simply had no intention of concealing himself at all. In a place drowning in desire and crossed through with struggles for power, someone like that was practically a rare species.
If attracting my attention had been his goal, then I had to admit he had succeeded spectacularly.