Chapter 41: The Soup Was Already Drunk, My Lord

Such a handsome face. What a waste of a mouth.

Mingyi cursed him thoroughly on the inside and offered him a gracious smile on the outside. "How could I think such a thing? This humble one was merely concerned about sullying your garments." She covered her lips lightly. "Women are always inconvenienced during these affairs — I hope my lord will forgive the trouble. The kitchen has prepared Chicken Marrow Bamboo Shoots and Shredded Deer Tendon especially for you. Won't you go and try them?"

Her expression was open and easy, her eyes full of nothing but pleasant innocence. If he pressed the matter now, he'd only look petty.

Ji Bozhai sat with displeasure settled across his face like bad weather.

"My lord~" She reached out and hooked her fingers through his, swaying them gently back and forth. "The dishes will go cold."

He turned his head away and said nothing.

Mingyi came around to face him, blinking. "Is my lord too tired to walk? This humble one can carry you."

Her frame was slight, her arms slender. It was clearly a joke.

Ji Bozhai eyed her for one unhurried moment, then stood up and settled his full weight onto her back.

Mingyi: ...She had been joking.

Did he not know his own weight? Did he not understand the concept of a joke? She was half his size. She stared straight ahead and breathed through her nose.

Having made the offer, she could only follow through. She got her arms under his knees, gathered herself, and announced: "One, two, three — up!"

Ji Bozhai made a faint sound of consideration. "Only the dockworkers at Star Yearn City shout like that when loading cargo."

Mingyi began the journey to the Eight Immortals Table, grinding her teeth with every step. "My lord is... exceedingly precious."

She put considerable feeling into the word precious. He appeared not to notice, lounging comfortably against her back and turning her hairpin over in his fingers as though he were resting on an actual couch.

The distance from the inner chamber to the table was not long. It felt extremely long. Veins stood out on her forehead. She was almost there — almost there — when Ji Bozhai said, in the pleasant tone of someone with an entirely reasonable request: "The flowers outside are in bloom. I'd like to see them from the windowsill."

Mingyi stopped walking.

The cemetery flowers were in bloom too. Remarkably lovely, apparently.

"Are your legs troubling you, my lord?" she asked, smiling.

"They are," he confirmed, and sighed with theatrical depth. "Quite exhausted."

He said it with a straight face.

Mingyi changed direction. She had trained her body since she was young — a fact she was grateful for, because otherwise her eventual entry in any anthology of notable women would read: while others fell gloriously in battle or met romantic tragedy, she was crushed flat beneath an inconsiderate man asking to look at flowers.

"I never realized Yi'er was so capable," Ji Bozhai remarked, in the tone of a man genuinely impressed. "I've underestimated you."

"Please continue to do so," she wheezed, depositing him onto the Imperial Concubine Couch by the window and then folding entirely beside him. "Only the terror of dropping you gave me the strength."

She issued a theatrical aiyo and dissolved sideways.

Sweat had worked through her powder. Her cheeks were flushed. Ji Bozhai watched her and laughed — quietly, the last of his earlier mood dispersing. "Let's eat."

"With gratitude, my lord." She gathered herself and called for the dishes.

---

The food had been kept warm and arrived quickly. Mingyi rolled up her sleeves and served him with small chopsticks, maintaining her post beside him.

Midway through the meal, Ji Bozhai asked: "Why did you take in Prince Ping's concubine?"

Her chest seized. She looked up at him.

This man spent most of his time pursuing pleasure — how did he know? She hadn't told anyone. Not even Granny Xun. No one had been following her.

He glanced at her sideways. "There are no walls that don't let wind through. Did you think you could keep it from me?"

Mingyi smoothed her expression and replied, calmly: "This servant doesn't understand what my lord means by harboring a concubine. That residence belongs to Zhang Tai. She wanted to take in her cousin — it has nothing to do with me."

Ji Bozhai picked up a piece of deer tendon and held it out to her with the air of someone rewarding a dog that had performed a satisfying trick. "Very clever."

She accepted it without comment and ate it. Harboring a runaway concubine was a crime. By placing the residence under another name, she had neatly removed him from any consequence.

"I hadn't intended to conceal it," she continued, once she'd swallowed. "I simply didn't expect my lord to ask." She paused, thinking. Prince Ping had concubines like other men had cups — how had anyone noticed one was missing? "How did my lord come to know of it?"

Ji Bozhai picked up his chopsticks. "Prince Ping doesn't have many living children. Three daughters and one son, currently. That concubine took his eldest illegitimate son when she left — of course it would be noticed." He added, almost to himself: "A man like that shouldn't have descendants to begin with."

Mingyi went still. Her fingers tightened slightly. "The child will take the surname Zhang from now on."

Not Prince Ping's line anymore. Just a boy with a new name.

Ji Bozhai glanced at her, faintly puzzled by the tension that had appeared on her face. He had stated a fact, nothing more — he hadn't said anything about the child.

But her eyes when she worried were soft and bright, and he found he wanted to keep her off-balance a little longer. "Even with a new surname, he's still Prince Ping's blood. What does it actually change?"

"It changes everything." She turned to face him, hands moving to illustrate. "Once he takes a different surname, he cannot enter Prince Ping's ancestral hall. The lineage is severed — it's the same as having no descendants at all. As long as no one finds Zhang Liu and her son, they might as well not exist." Her voice sharpened with something genuine underneath it. "Why should my lord add more blood to his hands when the problem has already solved itself?"

Ji Bozhai hummed. "Let me consider it."

"What is there to consider?" She climbed onto his lap before he could say anything else, looped one arm around his neck, and used the other to hold up a piece of meat at his mouth. "Come, my lord. Eat."

He coughed. "Are you trying to choke me?"

"Please eat more slowly." She handed him the soup bowl, all innocence. "Here."

Ji Bozhai looked at the bowl. Then at her. "You drink first."

Her face the picture of injured dignity, Mingyi tilted the bowl back and drank until the fish maw and deer velvet at the bottom were visible. She handed it back to him with a beatific expression. "So delicious, my lord. Would you like to try what remains?"

There was very little that remained. Ji Bozhai smirked — at her smugness, at the situation, at her generally — and then leaned in and kissed her.

Mingyi startled. She pulled back. His arms were already around her and she had no room to go.

She went still.

The disgust that moved through her was not something she could entirely suppress, even knowing she should. His presence was actually clean — no residue of anyone else's perfumes — but it made no difference to the part of her that rejected it.

She had been raised as a man. Her standards were a man's standards. He could do as he liked with others — that was the arrangement and she understood it. But coming to her afterward was something she could not make herself accept, no matter how many times she reminded herself to try.

When Ji Bozhai finally released her and tried to say something conciliatory, she slipped out of his arms.

"What's wrong?" He frowned.

She turned toward the window and— "Ugh—"

He stared.

"My lord, please, this servant can explain— ugh—"

Mingyi retched until her eyes were wet, hunched miserably over the windowsill. By the time it had passed and she'd recovered something close to composure, she turned to find the man beside her with an expression that had gone thoroughly, comprehensively dark.

She looked at him. He looked at her.

"My lord—"

"Don't."

The word sat in the room between them.

Mingyi opened her mouth. Closed it. Pressed her lips together and looked, for once, like she had nothing left to say.