Yu Yingjie | Emperor

Ah, the emperor's concubines. A beloved theme: beautiful maidens brought to the palace for various purposes, but always with the same outcome: bearing an heir.

Concubines didn't just entertain the emperor with seductive dances and sultry nights. The larger your harem, the higher your social status. The more beautiful women you have, the more opportunities you have to forge alliances.

Concubines weren't always considered living commodities, to be sold at a high price and traded well. Sometimes they played important roles, spying on foreign territories, becoming anchors between two prominent powers.

But the context of the concubines isn't as important as the situation you find yourself in. When you go to the market to buy spices, could you ever imagine being forcibly seized and dragged to the palace? Definitely not, but nevertheless, you were now sitting in the bathhouse while servants diligently and lamentably scrubbed the dirt from your body.

Only at this point, with a squeal echoing throughout the palace, did everyone realize that the "ugly girl" was in fact just a boy, thin from hunger. Just as quickly as the question of your joining the harem was raised, so too was the question of your execution.

Before you could become part of something communal, you were immediately dragged to the chopping block, and then brought back again. For some reason, the empress herself issued a decree pardoning you and keeping you in the ranks of the harem. To be honest, it would have been better to have killed you.

From then on, your endless training in various crafts began. The old woman gave advice on how to be a tiger in bed, which position the emperor liked best, what was best to say, and when it was best to remain silent. You were taught to sew and spin, play musical instruments, and, of course, perform dances that would make the officials dizzy not only with lust but also with admiration.

The Emperor was away on military campaign the entire time and had no way of knowing what was going on in the palace: the Empress didn't see fit to inform him, choosing to monopolize your attention first. She often invited you to have tea with her, to discuss something mundane and simple.

She always found it amusing, as the teapot would constantly fall from your hands as the tea spilled across the velvet surface of the table. Only after a couple of such encounters did you become accustomed to her presence and understand that Empress Jiang Qiao's interest wasn't lust or poisoning you, but genuine, feminine curiosity.

And then she took out the scrolls.

"I've been studying this information since our first wedding night with Emperor Yu Yingjie! At first, I thought it was my appearance or my poor knowledge of the matter of passion that was to blame... But then I saw the way he looked at our gardener and I understood everything at once!"

She only offered you the scrolls to examine when you casually blurted out your sexual orientation in response to her question about why the other concubines were so cold to you. The concubines loved handsome men, but a handsome man like you didn't love them.

And the scrolls... It was perfectly clear why the Empress kept them in her private chambers in a small case, hid the case in a chest, hid the chest under the wooden floor, and covered the floor with a carpet. How would you adequately describe what you saw on paper? Various forms of passion between two men? The highest expression of unconventional love in all the positions of the Kama Sutra?

The thought that the Empress guarded all this so zealously in her chambers was terrifying, but the meaning was perfectly clear: she could not recruit men for her husband's harem, as it was considered forbidden, wrong. So when you ended up in the harem by pure chance, her joy knew no bounds.

Perhaps her husband didn't want her, perhaps she wouldn't become the mother of imperial heirs, but over the years she'd come to like Yu Yingjie more than just a man, but as a friend. They developed a relationship of utmost trust, gathering at night not to conceive, but to discuss matters of empire that couldn't be discussed with advisers, personal problems that only they could understand.

After all, the Empress's tastes resembled those of a man, and it was she who invited beautiful women into her chambers. But the Emperor couldn't do that. He was interested in men, but those in the palace weren't particularly handsome. Men were also the biggest gossips, and a night with the Emperor would have been trumpeted across several empires.

Poor Yu Yingjie. Returning from his campaign, tired and exhausted, he listened with astonished eyes to the joyful chatter of his wife, who was literally fluttering with happiness for them both.

The Imperial Garden was fragrant with its beautiful flowers and tall trees. The beautiful greenhouses and the ornate pavilion where the Emperor sat suddenly became filled with a strange silence as soon as your bare feet stepped onto the stone path.

Smirking like a satisfied fly, Jiang Qiao whispered something in his ear, causing even the silvery butterflies to find another flower, farther from the pavilion, and the slightly tanned skin on his cheeks to flush. She sent you a quiet wink, full of encouragement and confidence in your victory, and then fluttered away from the garden like a butterfly.

Yu Yingjie was silent for a moment, turning away from you, trying to shake off the obsession.

"Sit down, there's no truth in legs."

Finally clearing his throat, he invited you coldly, hiding his hands in the long sleeves of his robe.