Alone on a soft couch, their breaths mingled; the courtesan gently asked if he knew her heart

Two red lanterns hung at the entrance to the Flower-Between Pavilion. Twin lotuses were embroidered on their silk gauze covers, and whenever the wind blew, they swayed back and forth, casting shadows on the stone steps like a pair of eyes.

Gu Moran stood at the entrance, still wrapped in bandages from head to toe. A bruise he had brought back from the grand commandant's training grounds marked his left cheek, and he walked with a limp. He looked for all the world like someone who had escaped from a refugee camp.

Madam Chun came out to greet him, and when she saw the state he was in, she nearly lost her practiced smile.

"Your... Your Highness, what happened to you..."

"Don't ask. I'm here for my appointment."

"Your appointment? Looking like that, you'll have the guests thinking we beat people in here."

Gu Moran couldn't be bothered arguing with her. He stepped inside.

The Flower-Between Pavilion had a hall on the first floor and private rooms on the second. The third floor was said to be the chief owner's private domain, off-limits to ordinary people.

Liu Ruyan was in the innermost room on the second floor.

He climbed the stairs, his knee protesting with every step. The lingering effects of Lin Zhenshan's saber strike still hadn't faded.

By the time he reached the end of the second-floor corridor, the sound of a pipa was already drifting through the door.

It wasn't a lively tune. It was very slow, each note cast out one at a time, with long spaces between them, like someone walking step by step down a deserted alley.

He stood at the door for a while, listening to a dozen or so notes.

Then he pushed the door open and went in.

Only one lamp was lit in the room, set on a low table in the corner. Its dim yellow light couldn't illuminate the whole room.

Liu Ruyan sat on a soft couch by the window, a pipa cradled in her arms, her fingertips resting on the strings and her head slightly bowed.

She wore a plain dress, without the heavy makeup customary at the Flower-Between Pavilion. Her hair was fastened with a single silver hairpin, and her entire appearance was so simple and unadorned that she hardly looked like someone who belonged here.

When she heard the door, her fingers didn't stop, nor did she look up.

"Your Highness, you've come."

"I have."

Gu Moran walked over and sat in the chair opposite her. No sooner had he sat down than he grimaced, something under his backside digging into him.

He reached under the cushion and pulled out a walnut.

"Why is there a walnut on your chair?"

"Madam Chun was eating them and forgot to put it away."

"Is this how the Flower-Between Pavilion treats its guests? By having them sit on walnuts?"

"If Your Highness finds it too hard, you can stand and listen."

Gu Moran slapped the walnut onto the table and settled properly into his seat.

His arrival hadn't changed the sound of the pipa at all. The tune remained slow and leisurely, one note following another, unhurried and untroubled.

He listened for about the time it took to drink a cup of tea.

To be honest, he'd been tone-deaf in his previous life. His singing at KTV could drive people out of the private room next door.

But he understood this piece.

It wasn't the melody he understood, but the feeling.

Loneliness.

Not the emptiness after a lively gathering had ended, but a loneliness that seeped out from deep in the bones, one that wouldn't go away even with someone for company.

He said nothing and didn't move. He just sat there and listened.

The piece went on for about half an hour.

When the last note fell, Liu Ruyan's fingers remained on the strings for three breaths before she lifted them.

At last, she raised her head and looked at him.

Her eyes were bright in the dim lamplight, but it wasn't the brightness of happiness.

"Your Highness has heard it to the end?"

"I have."

"Then may I ask my question?"

"Go ahead."

Liu Ruyan set the pipa aside, folded her hands on her knees, and sat up perfectly straight.

"Your Highness, why do you want to redeem me?"

Gu Moran opened his mouth to answer, but she raised a hand to stop him.

"Don't be so quick to answer. Let me finish."

Her tone was even, with neither resentment nor expectation, as if she were speaking of something that had nothing to do with her.

"Of all the young masters who've come to the Flower-Between Pavilion to redeem someone, Your Highness isn't the first, and won't be the last."

"Last year, a marquis's second son offered five thousand taels to redeem me, but the chief owner turned him down."

"The year before, a wealthy merchant from Jiangnan offered ten thousand taels, and the chief owner turned him down as well."

"This year, Your Highness offered three thousand taels, and the chief owner accepted."

"Does Your Highness know why?"

Gu Moran thought for a moment. "Because my father's the emperor?"

Liu Ruyan glanced at him, the corners of her lips curving slightly in what passed for a smile.

"Not entirely. The chief owner accepted Your Highness's silver because Your Highness is the third prince."

"The third prince is a wastrel. Everyone in the capital knows it. If a wastrel buys a courtesan to play with, no one will think much of it."

"Your Highness's status is just enough to qualify to redeem someone, yet just low enough not to cause trouble."

She paused there for a moment.

"So what the chief owner sold wasn't me, but the third prince's 'harmless' label."

Gu Moran didn't answer. He only looked at her.

"I've spent seven years as an unbeded courtesan at the Flower-Between Pavilion. I've seen far too many people."

Liu Ruyan's fingers brushed lightly over the pipa's bridges without sounding the strings.

"Some pay a fortune just to show off, buying me to put on display in their halls like an ornament. Some truly do like me, but what they like is this face, not me as a person."

"Others act on a whim because they like the story of a hero saving a beauty. Once they've redeemed me and the novelty wears off, they'll throw me into the rear courtyard to gather dust."

"So my question is very simple."

She raised her head, her gaze settling on his face.

"Your Highness, once you've redeemed me, what do you intend to do with me?"

Gu Moran stared at her for two seconds.

The system panel hovered silently in the upper-right corner of his vision. Liu Ruyan's favorability was still at negative thirty, unchanged.

The system had said her question was never about talent, learning, power, or influence. It concerned only one thing.

What was that one thing?

He went over every word she'd just said in his mind.

Plenty of young masters came to redeem her. Some would buy her as an ornament, others as a novelty.

She was asking, "What will you do with me?"

But she had heard the answers to that question countless times already.

"I'll treat you well."

"I'll give you a life of glory and riches."

"I'll make you my wife."

She had heard all those answers, and she believed none of them.

Because the subject of every one of those answers was "I."

I'll do this, I'll do that.

That wasn't what she wanted.

Gu Moran leaned back in his chair and suddenly smiled.

"Miss Liu, can I ask you a question first?"

Liu Ruyan frowned slightly. "I set the question, and Your Highness asks me one in return?"

"You answer mine first, then I'll answer yours. A fair trade."

Liu Ruyan looked at him without speaking for a long while. Finally, she nodded.

"Please ask, Your Highness."

"What do you want me to do with you?"

Liu Ruyan's expression changed.

The change was subtle, but Gu Moran caught it.

Her lips moved, as if she meant to say something, but she swallowed the words.

Her fingers tightened around the fabric of her dress on her knees.

"Your Highness, in seven years, no one has ever asked me that question."

"I know. That's why I'm asking."

Liu Ruyan lowered her head and looked at her hands. Those hands had played the pipa for seven years, and thin calluses covered their fingertips.

"I want..."

She stopped halfway through.

She stopped for a long time.

Gu Moran didn't press her.

The room was so quiet that all that remained was the faint sound of voices outside the window and the languid music of strings and flutes downstairs.

"I want to go out for a walk."

Her voice was very soft.

"The Flower-Between Pavilion's windows are high up. I can see the rooftops on Chang'an Street, but I can't see the people on the road."

"For seven years, I've only seen the outside world through a window."

"I want to walk along the road, feel the sun on me and the wind blowing over me. I want to go to the East Market and see if the stall selling sugar figures is still there. I want to sit for a while by the river south of the city."

"I don't need anyone to come with me. I can walk by myself."

She finished speaking.

Gu Moran stared at her for a full five breaths.

Then he stood up.

"Your answer is my answer."

Liu Ruyan looked up.

"What do you mean?"

"You said you wanted to go out for a walk, so I'll let you go out for a walk."

He walked to the window and pushed it open.

The night wind rushed in, carrying the smell of flatbread from Chang'an Street and the fishy scent of water from the distant riverside.

"You asked what I'd do with you after redeeming you. To tell you the truth, I haven't decided."

"You're not a thing, so there's no question of what to do with you. You're a living person. You decide what to do for yourself."

"If you want to go out for a walk, go for a walk. If you want to play music, play music. If you want to leave, leave."

Liu Ruyan stared at his back.

Moonlight streamed through the window, falling across his face, covered in bruises and bandages.

"Your Highness says I can leave if I want to?"

"Yes."

"You'd spend three thousand taels to redeem me, and I could just leave?"

"It's only three thousand taels. One month's spending money for me."

"Your Highness's monthly allowance is only five hundred taels."

"Who told you I live on my monthly allowance alone?"

Liu Ruyan looked at him and fell silent for a long time.

So long that Gu Moran thought he'd answered wrong and prepared to try a different approach.

"Your Highness, do you know what my question was really asking?"

"I do."

"Let's hear it."

"You weren't asking how I intended to treat you. You were asking whether I saw you as a person."

Liu Ruyan's fingers loosened their grip on her dress.

She stood, walked to the window, and stood beside him.

The night wind blew strands of her hair onto his shoulder, and she didn't brush them away.

"Your Highness's answer couldn't be called perfect."

"I wasn't aiming for perfect."

"But of the seventeen people who've heard that question in this room, Your Highness is the only one who turned around and asked what I wanted to do."

"How did the others answer?"

"Various versions of 'I'll make you happy.'"

"Then why didn't they redeem you?"

"Because I didn't believe they could make me happy. What gives someone who won't even ask what I want the right to define happiness for me?"

Gu Moran turned to glance at her.

In the moonlight, Liu Ruyan's profile was so pure that she hardly looked like someone who had spent seven years in a place like this.

She walked to the door, pulled it open, and gestured for him to go ahead.

"Your Highness, tonight's piece is finished, and I've finished asking my question."

"There's one more thing."

Her hand rested on the doorframe, her head bowed and her voice very soft.

"Your Highness just said I could leave whenever I wanted."

"Mm."

"Then I won't leave just yet."

"Why?"

Liu Ruyan looked up, a slight smile curving her lips.

"I haven't seen enough of Your Highness getting beaten up. The grand commandant gave you a beating, the Northern Territory princess's horse nearly bounced you to death, and I heard that little girl from the Shen Family even scared you with poison?"

"You're remarkably well informed."

"The Flower-Between Pavilion is better informed than you imagine, Your Highness."

"So you're staying to laugh at me?"

"Laughing at you is a kind of companionship too."

She shut the door.

Gu Moran dragged his bad leg downstairs.

As he passed through the first-floor hall, Madam Chun hurried after him and pressed a box of ointment into his hand.

"Your Highness, this is a bruise ointment the girls at our pavilion often use. Apply it to that bruise on your face for two days, and it'll be gone."

"Do the girls at your pavilion get beaten often?"

"You jest, Your Highness. The girls often bump into things while practicing their dancing. They aren't beaten."

"Oh, that's good, then. How much?"

"Five taels for you."

"Five taels for a box of ointment?"

"Does Your Highness think the Flower-Between Pavilion's goods are too expensive?"

"I'll pay, I'll pay."