Chapter 34#

And then the two “Heavenly Fire Sect members” who had been holding us at swordpoint let out a shout and fled in opposite directions.

And then the guards who had been “poisoned to death” and lying on the floor all simultaneously “rose from the dead” at that signal, surged forward as one, and pinned Guan Mingyue to the ground.

The guard captain then bellowed, with a delay of God knows how long: “ASSASSIN!”

……

……….

…………..

Well. That was spectacularly awkward.

I had no idea where Chu Ruiyuan had sourced his cast of extras, or where he’d learned the classic “shared danger forges true bonds / crisis elevates romance” playbook.

What I did know was that Guan Mingyue — that poor man — was going to have a considerably harder time rising to Chief Justice under Chu Ruiyuan’s reign in this life.

Honestly, I felt like both of them — Chu Ruiyuan, who had turned genuine feeling into a theatrical production, and Guan Mingyue, who had charged in as a hero and instantly become a would-be assassin of the Crown Prince — were probably calling each other an idiot in their heads right now.

And yet somehow they both kept perfectly straight faces, accepted the simple and entirely plausible explanation of “a misunderstanding, all a misunderstanding,” and proceeded to engage in warm and cordial exchange between the Crown Prince and his subject.

I was the only one sitting off to the side, struggling desperately not to laugh.

Small wonder one of them became emperor and the other Chief Justice, with such a fine working relationship between them.

Meanwhile I had fumbled through two entire lifetimes and topped out at a minor seventh-rank sinecure, which I’d been forced to resign within a few years.

My friend hadn’t reached Chief Justice in two consecutive lives by being a fool. After a few more pleasantries with the Crown Prince, he cited pressing business and made a graceful exit from the scene of the disaster.

Once Guan Mingyue was gone, Chu Ruiyuan and I looked at each other in silence. The guards and the “performers” didn’t dare breathe. The room was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.

I watched the tips of his ears go red, and nearly lost my composure entirely. I covered it with a deliberate cough and said: “I understand what Your Highness intended. I’m touched.”

He dismissed the guards with an expression of perfect dignity — while his ears turned red all the way to the roots. He held my hand for a long moment before finally saying: “I didn’t mean to deceive you…”

In all the times I’d watched this sort of thing in dramas — the overbearing CEO staging a damsel-in-distress rescue — I’d always thought it was the most ridiculous, brainless thing imaginable.

Having now lived through it in person, I still thought it was ridiculous and brainless. I also thought it was completely, unbearably endearing.

Perhaps because his face was so beautiful.

Or because he had genuinely treated me so well in the last life.

Or because in this life, his intentions toward me were just as sincere.

Whatever the reason, I had to admit — I was a little moved.

All right. More than a little. Given everything — his many excellent qualities, the fact that the previous final boss was no longer on the board — even without fully understanding what was going on with him, I was genuinely, thoroughly moved.

So I leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to the cheek of the ridiculous, brainless, unbearably endearing soon-to-be CEO, then looked at him with complete seriousness and said: “Even if you do deceive me, I don’t mind.”

After all, I’d deceived him across two entire lifetimes.

Even if I got deceived once in return, I was still well ahead.

Besides, he had no reason to deceive me in matters of the heart.

In those dramas and novels where the male lead tricks the female lead into falling for him — for revenge or whatever other reason — only to abandon her afterward…

Do you think he’d stake imperial authority and dynastic power on a scheme like that?

Give this soon-to-be CEO five years and it might be uncertain, but give him ten — having my entire family executed down to the last member would be no trouble at all. Why would he bother manufacturing false feelings? He wasn’t stupid.

Though right now, looking at his expression, he did seem a little stupid.

That young face was beautiful when he smiled, but grinning that widely just made him look genuinely, thoroughly dopey.

Though I was probably making an even dopier face.

Grinning right back at him, and without his looks to justify it.

Oh well. They do say people in love are fools. After two lifetimes of bad ends and heartbreak, this was the first time we’d ever truly understood each other. Let us be fools for a while.

Once we’d finally exhausted our capacity for wordless, idiotic smiling, we spent the rest of the day stuck to each other like glue before finally going our separate ways — back to our respective homes, our respective… well, he didn’t have a mother anymore.

Which was a terrible thing to think, and also: thank heavens.

Over the following year or so, Chu Ruiyuan found excuses every other day to keep me overnight in the Eastern Palace, and the Emperor generally approved.

But starting from today, even if his father gave permission, I could not.

I’d had my first emission that morning. I was, by any reasonable measure, now officially a man.

My ambiguous entanglement was with the soon-to-be CEO, not the current one. If I kept staying the night in the palace, I’d be accused of debauching the imperial household and have no grounds for protest whatsoever.

The soon-to-be CEO understood the stakes perfectly well. He looked deeply reluctant, but still let me leave the palace as evening fell, and instructed me to come find him early the following day, rest day or not.

I agreed, and did set out early enough from the Prime Minister’s household — but arrived rather later than intended.

Because my carriage encountered a funeral procession on the road.

I wasn’t held up for long, but while I waited I caught a few fragments of gossip from the onlookers outside my window — and found myself obliged to tell the driver to keep the carriage stopped until I’d heard the whole thing.

The gossip had nothing to do with affairs of state. It concerned the private business of the family currently holding the funeral.

According to the bystanders, the one being buried was a young woman — a daughter of good family who had been seduced and then abandoned by a wandering scoundrel, and had died after bearing his illegitimate child.

The illegitimate birth alone would have been scandalous enough. But the child had come into the world with white hair and a broken palm line — every fortune teller consulted had declared him a cursed star, a blight upon those around him, bound to bring ruin to all he was close to.

And so it seemed to go: shortly after the child’s birth, the young woman’s father fell ill and died. Now, at three years old, the boy had apparently claimed his own mother.

Who knew what calamity he might cause next.

I listened, and felt a strange sense of familiarity.

Then it clicked.

That was Dugu Yan.

Dugu Yan occupied an odd place in the memories I carried from my first two lives — both shallow and deep at once.

Shallow, because across both lives combined, we’d spent perhaps half a year in each other’s company. During that half-year I’d been busy with the tea house, busy with Chu Ruiyuan, and our actual time together had been limited.

And yet he had a face that could stand alongside Chu Ruiyuan’s, and his existence had been entangled with my early deaths in both lives. So the thread connecting us was, in its way, quite significant.

Just thinking about his catastrophically advanced case of incurable dramatic flair, the Fate-Binding curse, the Fate-Severing artifact, and his later behavior after becoming emperor of the Southern Tribes — it made my head ache. Which was why I’d always made a point of not thinking about him at all.