The side door swung open. A serving girl stepped in with wine.
She must have been distracted, because she caught the hem of her own skirt mid-step and pitched forward — wine arcing off the tray — and landed squarely in Ji Bozai's lap. Half the table went quiet. The girl looked up at him with a face full of color, her voice trembling at the edges.
"Sir, I — I tripped. I meant no offense."
The spilled wine hit the air sharp and warm. It should have been an awkward moment. Instead, with the girl draped across him like that, it made for a scene that was almost too easy to misread.
Ji Bozai's first instinct was not to look at her.
He looked at Mingyi.
Wine had splashed into her hair. Her seat had been bumped. His lap was occupied by someone else entirely. Any one of those things should have made her stand up. He half expected her to reach over and pull the girl off him herself.
She didn't.
She blinked at the two of them with something close to nothing in her expression, then quietly slid further down the bench to give him room.
Something in his chest pulled tight.
He lifted a hand, had the serving girl moved aside, and drew Mingyi back to her original place without making a production of it.
"Where did it get you?" he asked.
She looked at him — a flicker of surprise — then touched the side of her bun and tilted it toward him. "Here."
He caught his sleeve and leaned in to dab it dry, frowning slightly. "You're usually sharper than that. Why didn't you move?"
"She was fast," Mingyi said, head dipped, letting him work the green beads loose without protest. "I didn't have time."
From the side of the room, the serving girl had pulled herself together enough to be indignant.
"Sir." Her voice went brittle. "It was her who put out her foot. She tripped me first. I would never have stumbled otherwise."
Ji Bozai didn't look up. "Noted. You can go."
She didn't go. She stood there a moment longer, her breath unsteady, and when she spoke again her voice had dropped into something rawer.
"You weren't like this before. Is it because of what happened last time? I already know I was wrong. These days I haven't taken a single guest — I've been waiting. Waiting for you to come so I could explain. And you come, but you bring someone to sit where I'm supposed to sit."
She faltered half a step, like she hadn't meant to say the next part out loud.
"All I have is this. Everything I am, I already gave to you. What else do you want from me? Just say it. I'll give that too."
Mingyi heard her clearly.
She kept her eyes on the table.
The girl was genuinely in love with him — that much was obvious. She had a good face, probably some talent beneath it, and she had poured all of it toward a man who was never going to buy her out. Ji Bozai would have kept her comfortable and kept her guessing with just enough warmth to hold her in place. That was the cruelty of it. Not coldness — sweetness, carefully rationed.
A dog doesn't change what it eats.
Ji Bozai noticed her expression shift.
He'd assumed by now that she was too accustomed to his world to feel anything about it. Or maybe she'd just learned not to show it — kept herself small so he wouldn't think she had doubts about his intentions toward her.
He didn't need her doubts. He'd already decided.
"Take her out," he said, raising his chin toward the door. "Girl Qingli has had too much. Have someone from the house look after her until she's clear-headed."
Two staff members moved. Qingli took a few steps with them before something broke in her — she turned back, searching his face for anything. When she found nothing, she let herself be led out.
The crying started once the door closed. Low at first, then not.
Around the table, no one looked especially surprised. This kind of scene played out in places like this more often than it didn't. A few of the men looked mildly regretful that it had resolved so quickly — they'd been watching with interest.
Yan Xiao tapped Ji Bozai with his fan. "My lord has a very clean way of drawing lines."
"I'll take that as a compliment." Ji Bozai glanced down at Mingyi. "A thing I worked to keep — I'm not going to be the one who breaks her."
Mingyi smiled. She meant it, mostly. She just found herself thinking about how narrow the world was for women who had nothing but a man's interest to stand on. Qingli had been trained for years — groomed to be exceptional — and this was still where she ended up. What hope was there for anyone with fewer advantages.
She thought, not for the first time, that if women could be educated the same way men were — trained not just in elegance but in real skill, given the same rooms to grow into — things might look different.
"I treat people I don't care about that way," Ji Bozai said, reaching for the wine. He wasn't looking at her, but it was clearly aimed at her. "Not you."
She lowered her eyes and let the corners of her mouth do the work. "It's an honor just to be kept in mind."
It probably looked ridiculous from the outside — the two of them sitting like that, easy together. Across the table, Shu Zhonglin made a face.
"You're both insufferable. Some of us are still looking."
The table laughed. Liang Xiuyuan, who had been quiet, cleared his throat.
"Don't include me in that."
Everyone looked at him.
Ji Bozai raised an eyebrow. "When did this happen? You never said anything."
"Which girl?" someone asked. "Bring her next time."
Liang Xiuyuan smiled — a slow, inward thing. "She's occupied at the moment. Once the fighters start their trials, she'll have room."
Yan Xiao tilted his head. "A phoenix-tail girl?"
"Yes. But not like the others." His voice had a different quality when he talked about her. "She's not interested in wealth or in attaching herself to any particular fighter's future. She just does her work. The day I first saw her she was arranging the practice grounds, and there was something in how she moved through the space — I've never seen a girl think about strategy the way she did."
He looked almost lit from the inside. The table leaned in.
"What's her name?"
Liang Xiuyuan cut a sideways look at Ji Bozai. "I'll tell you — but leave her alone."
Ji Bozai laughed. "I have enough to manage."
"Fair enough." He settled back. "Her name is Tianji. Third daughter of the Xu family."
Xu Tianji.
Mingyi went still.
"Which Xu family?" she asked, keeping her voice light.
"The one with the military record," Liang Xiuyuan said. He caught the look on her face. "Do you know her?"
Know was too simple a word for what existed between them.
She thought about what he'd just said — the way he'd described Tianji, that brightness in his eyes. Then she thought about the last time she'd seen Xu Tianji on the street, and what had passed between them then.
"No," she said. "I don't know her."
There was no use in saying more. A man that far gone in admiration wouldn't hear criticism as honesty — he'd hear it as something uglier. She had no interest in being that person.
She was happy being decorative and unbothered. Useful in ways that didn't require her to be sharp.
"The Xu daughters all attend the fighters' lectures," Shu Zhonglin said, nodding. "They tend to understand the life better than most. Bring her out sometime — I'd like to see what she looks like when she's actually planning something."
Liang Xiuyuan smiled. "Sooner than you think. She'll be at Yuanshiyuan when it opens."