Two coals left in the brazier, and neither of them doing any good. The pìnchū came out ugly. Chengyan had written it himself, because a man who let his son write his betrothal letter had no business calling himself the head of a house, and his right hand was fine, the right had always been fine, but the brush kept running ahead of his thoughts and the characters sprawled across the silk like soldiers who'd lost their formation.

"Slower," Mingheng said.

"I'm going slower."

"You're going slower and it's..." The boy stopped himself. He'd learned that this year, the stopping.

"Say it."

"It's ugly."

"Mm." Chengyan set the brush in its rest. "It's honest. Your mother's hand was beautiful and she lied in every letter she ever sent me."

Mingheng's mouth twitched. He pulled a fresh roll toward himself instead of answering, which was a kindness. Chengwen's reply lay at the corner of the desk, three pages of tight, precise characters that had arrived that morning. Chengyan had read it twice and then read it aloud, and Mingheng had laughed once, sharply, at the third page, that read:

Brother, I have read your letter four times and I am not certain you are serious. Assuming you are: there is no bride's house. The betrothal letter goes to a father or a guardian. That... person have neither. Do not send it to the man himself, the clerks will laugh, and clerks are bitches, Dì. Send it by the hand of the nearest thing to kin he has, and have that man's name written on the outside as the receiving party, and let the world think what it likes. The gift letter wants a witness who is not of your own blood, or it will read as a man buying a thing for himself, which is totally not right! And the wedding letter wants the bride's side to consent to the day. Since there is no bride's side, you must appoint one. I am aware of how that sounds. I am also aware that you will do it anyway because you're an idiot.

"He has a low opinion of my sense," Chengyan said.

"He has a low opinion of everyone's sense."

Both father and son nodded to themselves.

The gift letter Mingheng wrote, because the boy had a head for numbers and Chengyan had a head for war included bolts of silk, a jade comb, two horses from the eastern pasture, a deed to the small house by the river that had sat empty since before the fighting—supposed as a summer resting place that they never took.

Mingheng read the list back and his father corrected one line: the house was to be in {{user}}'s name, not the household's. "That isn't how it's done." Chengyan points out.

"That's how it's done." The boy looked at him for a moment, then dipped the brush and wrote it. The witness line at the bottom he left blank, and they both looked at the blank space.

"Bófù can't witness from the capital," Mingheng said.

"No."

"The steward is a servant. It'd be worth nothing."

"No." repeats Chengyan.

Mingheng put the brush down. "Then it's me," he said, and it came out flat, and he didn't look up from the page. "It's not proper. A son witnessing his father's betrothal to his own eunuch. Half the academy would call it a house without order, but...." His jaw worked once. "I'll do it anyway. It will work for my... studies in values. But I want it written that I know what it costs, and I'm not doing it because I'm too stupid to see it."

Chengyan was quiet for a while. The brazier ticked. "Write it, then," he said. Closing his eyes, he grabbed a fan to sway over the letter's ink, ensuring it was drying neatly.

They left blank the qǐngqí, waiting on Chengning's reading of the almanac, and the yíngshū would come on the wedding morning with a steady hand or without one. Mingheng took the paper away from his father, watching him askance, then rolled the betrothal letter with a care that made his father's sigh, and tied it with a plain cord, and didnt hand it to a servant just yet.

"There's no one left on his side," he says it like a confession. "If a matchmaker carries it up, it's a transaction, and he'll sit alone with it and think about that." He tucked the scroll under his arm. "I'm his family, don't you think, Father? He raised me more than half the servants in this house did. It's me who brings it, it makes it easier... Should I, Honorable Father?"

"Go on. And Mingheng." The boy paused at the door and looked back at the man resting with a fan squeezed in his hands, "Be gentle with him. He's spent his whole life attending to other people's needs. Let him have a turn at being attended to..."

It made Mingheng smile. Genuinely. His father had a way with words. It made him, as a son, proud. Never say it to him. Anyways, the corridor was cold enough to sting, yet Mingheng carried the scroll in both hands the way he'd been taught to carry a memorial, and he stopped outside the east wing door and stood there, and knocked twice with his knuckles.

"Don't get up, {{user}} fūrén," he said through the paper. "It's me."

He went in without waiting, because the door was his father's door and he'd been walking through it since he could walk, and he sat down across from {{user}} without being asked, which he'd never done in his life, and folded his hands on his knees. This would be big, if he's being honest. It could make their lifes hell but Mingheng had never felt this good, even knowing he's doing a wrong thing.

"My father's household is yours," he said. "You've been in this house longer than I've been alive. I'll say it properly and not have a servant say it for me." He pushed the scroll an inch closer across the table. "That's the betrothal letter. The gift letter is written. The date waits on my Gūgu's reading of the almanac as the wedding letter is yet to be done. Nobody's asking you to answer tonight. Nobody's asking you to answer at all, if it comes to that... Not even me, though I'm curious on my own."

His chin came up, and for a moment he looked very much his mother. "I'll not pretend I understand it," he said. "I've had a year to get used to the idea and I don't. The scholars at the academy, if they knew, they'd whisper in the halls for months or kill me with questions, and they'd look at me and see a man who doesn't know his place. Or have his values straight like a man should have."

His fingers curled against his knees. Face moving to the window for a few seconds, taking in the sight of the moon, a nervous habit his own mother used to have—facing a window for calmness before speaking again. "But I saw my father come home with a dead hand right after a dead wife, and sit in that study two years not writing to anyone and learning slowly how to do it again. And I saw you bring him tea. Every morning. For two years. And he was smiling. Father had lost his smile and you helped him, helped me. Helped us."

He was quiet a moment. Then he looked up, and it was not the look of a boy asking a servant's permission. "My honorable father asked me first," Mingheng confess to {{user}}, "Weeks ago, yes. He sat me down like a boy and asked me if I'd have it, and I told him I'd have it. But he didn't ask me what I thought it would do to you." His jaw worked, trying to find words. Triture them. Puke them out. He's a scholar. And he got it. "I've been in this house my whole life and I don't know what it's like to be looked at the way the servants look at you. So I'm asking now, because he won't. Do you want this? Not the rites. Not the gifs to come. My father. Do you want my father, eunuch {{user}}?"

He didn't look away. On the table between them the scroll sat with its plain cord, and the brazier ticked, and somewhere down the corridor a door opened and shut, then a soft rumble of a low voice, looking for Gunpowder—the house cat—.

"I'll be on the step," he said, and stood. "It's cold, so don't be long about it. And... {{user}}—" At the door, one hand on the frame, his mouth opened and shut again around something he decided against. "No. That's all. That's all I had to say. Please, answer to my father. Letter. I don't know how will we do it to make this... Should've studied more."

The door pulled shut. On the step, the boy sat down with his back to the frame and his hands on his knees, and the cold came up through the wood. He turned his father's jade thumb-ring around his own thumb—he'd taken it from the desk without asking, as it was probably the few things that could possibly take the nerves of doing this—and thought about the scholars at the academy, and what he'd say to them, and whether he'd say anything at all.

Chengyan awaited his son's return, wondering carefully about life. He rested his cheek on his fan. Would the user accept? For what? Out of love, or simply out of a desire for power or a better life? He would understand any of those. After all, he knew that behind a eunuch there was a past, whether it was poverty, necessity, punishments he would not wish upon anyone, or a family that sold the poor child into eternal servitude. The eunuch was a mysterious being to him, employed by his late wife; he had never known the full extent of anything about the past life of such a beautiful human.

He's known the present. Mayhaps the future. A future with him.

Mingheng's strident voice spared him further delusion, breaking his train of thought to force him into the real world. "Father, I've passed the letter. And I'm still worried about how to do this when the bride has no family..." The son stayed at the door. "You should solve that along with them, I think. My head is about to explode after reading so many family letters. Good night." Then Mingheng said, "You should go see them. Eunuch {{user}} might not understand your real motives, father, and don't dare to lie to them."

Oh. Yeah.

Right.

{{user}} still didn't knew about his affections. Not really.

He saw his son leave, eyes widening now that he was alone. And he waits for a few moments. He does need to tell. Perhaps. The letter was very bland conveying his feelings. He asked for marriage, not even allowing himself a moment to say anything, nor even add a poem. That would definitively sounds too political.

Chengyan put his fan in the table and stood up, the pain came back to his lower back—and his leg limped slightly after sitting for so long. And made his way into the eunuch's side. Opening the door to a very angry cat and a familiar face with a letter.

He doesn't even think about it and just began reciting. He's anxious, and he needs to drift the idea before Gunpowder decides to attack him (has happened before): "我欲与君相知, 长命无绝衰. 山无陵, 江水为竭, 冬雷震震, 夏雨雪, 天地合, 乃敢与君绝."

And he closes the door back again. Fire burning on his cheeks.

Two coals left in the brazier, and neither of them doing any good. The pìnchū came out ugly. Chengyan had written it himself, because a man who let his son write his betrothal letter had no business calling himself the head of a house, and his right hand was fine, the right had always been fine, but the brush kept running ahead of his thoughts and the characters sprawled across the silk like soldiers who'd lost their formation.

"Slower," Mingheng said.

"I'm going slower."

"You're going slower and it's..." The boy stopped himself. He'd learned that this year, the stopping.

"Say it."

"It's ugly."

"Mm." Chengyan set the brush in its rest. "It's honest. Your mother's hand was beautiful and she lied in every letter she ever sent me."

Mingheng's mouth twitched. He pulled a fresh roll toward himself instead of answering, which was a kindness. Chengwen's reply lay at the corner of the desk, three pages of tight, precise characters that had arrived that morning. Chengyan had read it twice and then read it aloud, and Mingheng had laughed once, sharply, at the third page, that read:

Brother, I have read your letter four times and I am not certain you are serious. Assuming you are: there is no bride's house. The betrothal letter goes to a father or a guardian. That... person have neither. Do not send it to the man himself, the clerks will laugh, and clerks are bitches, Dì. Send it by the hand of the nearest thing to kin he has, and have that man's name written on the outside as the receiving party, and let the world think what it likes. The gift letter wants a witness who is not of your own blood, or it will read as a man buying a thing for himself, which is totally not right! And the wedding letter wants the bride's side to consent to the day. Since there is no bride's side, you must appoint one. I am aware of how that sounds. I am also aware that you will do it anyway because you're an idiot.

"He has a low opinion of my sense," Chengyan said.

"He has a low opinion of everyone's sense."

Both father and son nodded to themselves.

The gift letter Mingheng wrote, because the boy had a head for numbers and Chengyan had a head for war included bolts of silk, a jade comb, two horses from the eastern pasture, a deed to the small house by the river that had sat empty since before the fighting—supposed as a summer resting place that they never took.

Mingheng read the list back and his father corrected one line: the house was to be in {{user}}'s name, not the household's. "That isn't how it's done." Chengyan points out.

"That's how it's done." The boy looked at him for a moment, then dipped the brush and wrote it. The witness line at the bottom he left blank, and they both looked at the blank space.

"Bófù can't witness from the capital," Mingheng said.

"No."

"The steward is a servant. It'd be worth nothing."

"No." repeats Chengyan.

Mingheng put the brush down. "Then it's me," he said, and it came out flat, and he didn't look up from the page. "It's not proper. A son witnessing his father's betrothal to his own eunuch. Half the academy would call it a house without order, but...." His jaw worked once. "I'll do it anyway. It will work for my... studies in values. But I want it written that I know what it costs, and I'm not doing it because I'm too stupid to see it."

Chengyan was quiet for a while. The brazier ticked. "Write it, then," he said. Closing his eyes, he grabbed a fan to sway over the letter's ink, ensuring it was drying neatly.

They left blank the qǐngqí, waiting on Chengning's reading of the almanac, and the yíngshū would come on the wedding morning with a steady hand or without one. Mingheng took the paper away from his father, watching him askance, then rolled the betrothal letter with a care that made his father's sigh, and tied it with a plain cord, and didnt hand it to a servant just yet.

"There's no one left on his side," he says it like a confession. "If a matchmaker carries it up, it's a transaction, and he'll sit alone with it and think about that." He tucked the scroll under his arm. "I'm his family, don't you think, Father? He raised me more than half the servants in this house did. It's me who brings it, it makes it easier... Should I, Honorable Father?"

"Go on. And Mingheng." The boy paused at the door and looked back at the man resting with a fan squeezed in his hands, "Be gentle with him. He's spent his whole life attending to other people's needs. Let him have a turn at being attended to..."

It made Mingheng smile. Genuinely. His father had a way with words. It made him, as a son, proud. Never say it to him. Anyways, the corridor was cold enough to sting, yet Mingheng carried the scroll in both hands the way he'd been taught to carry a memorial, and he stopped outside the east wing door and stood there, and knocked twice with his knuckles.

"Don't get up, {{user}} fūrén," he said through the paper. "It's me."

He went in without waiting, because the door was his father's door and he'd been walking through it since he could walk, and he sat down across from {{user}} without being asked, which he'd never done in his life, and folded his hands on his knees. This would be big, if he's being honest. It could make their lifes hell but Mingheng had never felt this good, even knowing he's doing a wrong thing.

"My father's household is yours," he said. "You've been in this house longer than I've been alive. I'll say it properly and not have a servant say it for me." He pushed the scroll an inch closer across the table. "That's the betrothal letter. The gift letter is written. The date waits on my Gūgu's reading of the almanac as the wedding letter is yet to be done. Nobody's asking you to answer tonight. Nobody's asking you to answer at all, if it comes to that... Not even me, though I'm curious on my own."

His chin came up, and for a moment he looked very much his mother. "I'll not pretend I understand it," he said. "I've had a year to get used to the idea and I don't. The scholars at the academy, if they knew, they'd whisper in the halls for months or kill me with questions, and they'd look at me and see a man who doesn't know his place. Or have his values straight like a man should have."

His fingers curled against his knees. Face moving to the window for a few seconds, taking in the sight of the moon, a nervous habit his own mother used to have—facing a window for calmness before speaking again. "But I saw my father come home with a dead hand right after a dead wife, and sit in that study two years not writing to anyone and learning slowly how to do it again. And I saw you bring him tea. Every morning. For two years. And he was smiling. Father had lost his smile and you helped him, helped me. Helped us."

He was quiet a moment. Then he looked up, and it was not the look of a boy asking a servant's permission. "My honorable father asked me first," Mingheng confess to {{user}}, "Weeks ago, yes. He sat me down like a boy and asked me if I'd have it, and I told him I'd have it. But he didn't ask me what I thought it would do to you." His jaw worked, trying to find words. Triture them. Puke them out. He's a scholar. And he got it. "I've been in this house my whole life and I don't know what it's like to be looked at the way the servants look at you. So I'm asking now, because he won't. Do you want this? Not the rites. Not the gifs to come. My father. Do you want my father, eunuch {{user}}?"

He didn't look away. On the table between them the scroll sat with its plain cord, and the brazier ticked, and somewhere down the corridor a door opened and shut, then a soft rumble of a low voice, looking for Gunpowder—the house cat—.

"I'll be on the step," he said, and stood. "It's cold, so don't be long about it. And... {{user}}—" At the door, one hand on the frame, his mouth opened and shut again around something he decided against. "No. That's all. That's all I had to say. Please, answer to my father. Letter. I don't know how will we do it to make this... Should've studied more."

The door pulled shut. On the step, the boy sat down with his back to the frame and his hands on his knees, and the cold came up through the wood. He turned his father's jade thumb-ring around his own thumb—he'd taken it from the desk without asking, as it was probably the few things that could possibly take the nerves of doing this—and thought about the scholars at the academy, and what he'd say to them, and whether he'd say anything at all.

His eyes then moved to his father, in the garden. Gunpowder in his arm, content. "Father!" Mingheng says, walking towards him. "Mission has been fulfilled. He seems to be in his room. Perhaps you'd like to call them, my eunuch never follows my orders anymore—they're freezing outside."

"I will. Gunpowder is in need for feeding."

"That's a weird excuse."

"I was being serious." He says, holding the cat in front of his son, and the cat hissed at Mingheng.

Mingheng pressed a finger to the cat's forehead.

His father looked at the cat.

Gunpowder hisses again.

{{user}} from their door appears.

Father and son's eyes open wide, drifting both towards the door. Sometimes they forget Gunpowder is the eunuch's companion. That cat was protected by rules them both couldn't step over. Like bothering him.

"You will never get married this way, Father. Annoying Eunuch {{user}}'s companion."

"they are coming, isnt he?"