Page 9

Mended Broken Mirror

Is anyone there, plucking bare the green twigs of Zhangtai...

The character Liu was unwritten, the verse unfinished, and the soft-pasted rice paper was pinched up from the desk by slender, delicate, fair fingers. Her silk skirt draped to the floor, swaying in alluring curves as the young maiden took lotus steps.

Inside the boudoir, fragrant incense smoke billowed in clouds, and green gauze gathered skirts bloomed like layers of blossoms. She walked step by swaying step toward the edge of the bed, her bare, untamed white arm lightly patting the shoulder of the man upon the mattress.

"The last character, you will write it for me."

Liu was her surname, and she wanted him to finish writing it for her. His handwriting was good—so good that scholars all over the capital rushed to emulate it—and his handwriting was exquisite, so exquisite that even a mere single character would command fortunes in gold from collectors and admirers. Yet here she was, asking him to write lewd and wanton verses for her inside her private chambers.

The man leaned sideways against the head of the bed, wearing only a plain white undergarment. The shirt's ties were loosened, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of his chest that left much to the imagination. Strands of long hair fell scattered across the bedding, sprawling over the pristine mattress, while a lock of bangs obscured his pupils, making it impossible for him to make out the seductive woman before him.

"Spare me." The man's thin lips moved, yet his pleading words carried an entirely disdainful attitude.

"Why?" The woman tilted her head innocently, her dark, bright, charming eyes blinking as the string of her bodice slipped naturally from her shoulder. It was hard to tell whether the picture she made was coy or bewitching.

Biting her lip, the man suddenly reached out, tangled his fingers in the long hair beside her neck, and gripped the back of her neck to pull her delicate face right up to his. He stopped abruptly just short of touching his lips to hers, his voice squeezed through his teeth. "I cannot write it. Because he forbids it."

"...Is it that you cannot write it for me, or that you cannot write the three characters Liu. Rong. Rong?"

He did not reply, shoved aside the bedding, and got out of bed to dress. She pressed close against him, wanting to help him put on his garments, but was gently pushed away and refused.

Left standing to the side, Liu Rongrong pulled the string of her bodice back onto her shoulder. "If you are so afraid of him, why did you still come?"

The man's hand froze as he tied his tunic, his profile turning to look at the woman leaning against the bedpost on the side.

"Because if you do not come, I will be sad. Do you feel guilty in your heart, and that is why you have come to see me?"

Her words made him lower his hands. With a detached expression, he walked up to her, grabbed her hand before she could react, and shoved her toward the bronze mirror. With a swift motion, he brushed aside her waist-length hair, exposing her porcelain-white neck. A flush of rouge-red, visible only after forceful sucking, was ambiguously branded upon her skin—like a bloody footprint left upon snow, making it impossible not to mind, impossible not to care.

This was not merely evidence; it was fundamentally a wound. He narrowed his eyes and spoke in a cold, hard tone. "He left that." It was not a question, but a certainty.

"..."

"I need to feel guilty?" He clenched a clump of her hair, trembling.

Liu Rongrong fell silent. She clutched the sheet of rice paper in her hand, crumpling it into a ball as if to throw it away, but he stopped her and took it from her hands.

He spread the calligraphy sheet flat onto the desk, pinned it down with a paperweight, and casually grabbed the brush from the desk. Sweeping his sleeve with an imposing air, he dipped the brush in ink and dashed it across the paper. An oversized character "Liu," completely out of tune with the previous verses, was stamped onto the rice paper as though discarded. The strokes were forceful, the ending crisp, and the slender, narrow style resembled the exquisite figure of a young maiden swaying gracefully.

"Do you want to take it to show him?"

"..."

"You are going to take it to show him, aren't you? The handwriting I wrote for you."

"I did not mean to, I... had no way to refuse him, did not want to be disliked by him, and cannot bear to be ignored by him... because I—"

"Enough." He did not want to hear her excuses over and over again. Leaving the calligraphy on the desk, he straightened his clothes and looked back at Liu Rongrong, who was clutching her shoulders and trembling. Tear-droplets were clearly spinning in her eyes, and she wanted to use her old tricks to force him to submit once more. But this should be the last time, and it had to be the last time.

"I have no interest in continuing to use myself as your stepping stone, as a tool for your flirting! If you want to make him care and feel jealous, go find someone else."

He slid open the door bolt and was about to step outside when she caught him from behind in a full embrace. She clung tightly to his body, refusing to budge an inch, and her thin garments were soaked with her tears, making it impossible for him not to feel her warmth.

"You would not lose your temper at me for no reason, would you? Every time you say you are leaving, do you not stay for me anyway? Because of what? Is it because of the nominations? Is it because the list for this Dongxu Mansion promotion into the palace review has once again weeded you out? Are you afraid that if he finds out you came to see me, your future will be ruined by me yet again?"

"..." He raised a hand to touch the arm she had looped around his waist, turning his head slightly sideways. The candlelight cast deep, unfathomable shadows across his handsome profile.

"Yet this is hardly the first time, is it not something you have understood long ago? I am your bane, am I not? Young Master Chenjing?"

Ah, yes. It was no longer the first time; both she and he were practically growing accustomed to it. Accustomed to his compromise, accustomed to him breaking down under her pleas every single time he heard them, setting aside his pride and persistence to return to this place. How many more times was he going to ruin his own life for this woman?

"You will not refuse me, you cannot do it, and this will not be the last time." Her lightly rouged lips opened and closed within his dark pupils.

He numbly shook his head. "It will. Because I no longer wish to be a piece of trash."

For he had learned a truth today, one so simple it was boring, taught to him by some strange fellow—what is love in this world? They are all a bunch of fucking trash, every last one of them.

That fellow looked frail and cowardly, bullying the soft and fearing the hard, as heartless as a local ruffian, crazy and reckless, spewing utter nonsense while actually claiming he wanted to send him a love letter. Yet no one knew how liberated, indulgent, venting, and cheerful his mood had been at that very instant when he caught a glimpse of those unpoetic words and blurted out a string of curses.

If he was fortunate enough to meet him again, he would ask him to...

Bang. The boudoir door was shoved open from the outside.

Thump, thump, thump... A ball of flesh rolled to his feet.

Smack. It crashed against the table leg beside him.

Rankings

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Ancient Romance

Cross-dressing