Before leaving Shangjing, Zhang Ting’an took the blade he had carried through countless battles and cut a stack of old, yellowed letters in half, one by one.
“Yuhuai.” A voice drifted toward him from memory, warm with laughter.
His eyelids trembled as he looked up, and there was Li Bingsheng — her hair still unbound — smiling as she leaned down toward him. “Why are you hiding here again? Don’t you want to see me?”
Back then, his academic performance had been abysmal. Among all the imperial study companions, he had stood out as a complete misfit — even the Grand Tutor had declared that he was a disgrace to the Zhang Family name.
But Li Bingsheng didn’t care. She always managed to find him in whatever forgotten corner he had tucked himself into, and then she would extend her clean, delicate hand toward him. “Take me fishing, will you?”
“Your Highness ought to prioritize your studies.”
“There are already enough people saying that to me. I don’t want to hear it from you too.” She pouted in displeasure, her fair skin flushed with a soft, luminous pink.
Zhang Ting’an still didn’t know what had come over him — he had actually agreed to help her climb over the palace wall.
Her delicately embroidered shoes pressed down onto his shoulder. The moment he glanced up, he was so startled that he lost his balance and instinctively lurched to the side.
“Ah——” She came tumbling down.
He shot his arms out and caught her.
Her skirts billowed around her — even layered as they were, the fabric was so light and thin that he could feel the warmth of her body through them.
Zhang Ting’an set her down and immediately dropped to his knees, head bowed to the ground, ready to accept death.
But Li Bingsheng burst into delighted laughter, grabbed his hand, and pulled him into the grape vines nearby, ducking away from the passing palace guards.
The green vines grew thick and lush, their leaves overlapping in dense tangles. In the narrow shade beneath them, Li Bingsheng fixed her gaze on him for a long moment — then suddenly rose onto her toes and pressed her lips to his.
Zhang Ting’an didn’t dare move a muscle.
He thought she was incredibly soft — one touch and she might shatter. He thought she smelled wonderful, like sweet, glistening grapes.
That night he dreamed: a dream filled with billowing skirts and a pair of phoenix eyes curved beautifully in laughter.
When he woke, his bedding was soiled. He blushed to the roots of his ears and washed it himself — and then, while washing, he gave himself an aggravated punch.
From that day on, Li Bingsheng made a habit of cornering him — sometimes pulling him into an embrace, sometimes stealing a kiss.
Lips intertwined, a young heart stirred.
He thought she liked him.
He began to diligently study the political essays he hated, to practice his calligraphy and painting with dedication — all so that at the next small examination, he might rank high enough to sit closer to her in the lecture hall.
But on the day the results were announced, when he went to find her, he saw her pressing another study companion into the shadow of those same grape vines — the same intertwining vines, the same tender intimacy.
Zhang Ting’an let the hand holding his exam scroll fall to his side.
He returned to his studies anyway, throwing himself into them with even greater intensity — until she couldn’t help but saunter over and tease him: “Working yourself this hard just to sit closer to me?”
The hard work was real. But it was no longer for her.
He finished all of his coursework ahead of schedule, passed the examinations, and left the palace to return to the Zhang Family without looking back.
She came storming after him, cornering him against the courtyard wall and demanding: “Have you fallen for someone else?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want to see me anymore?”
“Yes.”
He had assumed she would give up and retreat — but he had forgotten that she had been born into the imperial family, and imperial blood ran proud. When her temper rose, she simply shoved him into an empty woodshed.
“Your Highness!”
“If you dare resist, I’ll have your entire clan exterminated!”
“……”
“See? You do like me, don’t you — would you react like this in front of whoever you claim to have feelings for?”
“Don’t say another word……”
He had been raised by the strictest grandmother in the Zhang Family, and he had been governed by the most rigid propriety: men and women were not to draw near to one another, and even a meeting required a third party present.
Yet in those years when he was still a teenager, in that dim and shadowy woodshed, something in him had broken loose — he had turned, and found her pinned beneath him.
“Yuhuai, would you be willing to like only me?” She wrapped her arms around him and asked softly.
Zhang Ting’an did not answer then.
All those years of youth had been spent within the Eastern Palace. He accompanied her in music, chess, calligraphy, and painting; he accompanied her over walls and into trouble; even when they were punished, he knelt behind her and quietly slipped a cushion beneath her knees.
Aside from her, who else could he possibly like?
In the midst of their tangled closeness, he finally couldn’t hold back the question that had been festering in him: “That day beneath the grape vines — who were you kissing?”
“The grape vines?” Li Bingsheng raised an eyebrow. “The only person I’ve ever kissed under those vines is you.”
“Liar.”
“Truly.”
He grew angry, enunciating each word with precision: “The eighth day of the second lunar month, two years ago. After the small examination results were posted.”
Li Bingsheng tilted her head and thought for a moment, then rolled her eyes. “Are you blind? That wasn’t a kiss — that was the Min Family boy who was always bullying you. I was settling a score with him. Just because he’s shorter than me doesn’t mean you get to think I was kissing him.”