Chapter Text
After lunch, she and Jinshi headed to the Garnet Pavilion as inconspicuously as she could. It was easier than she thought it would be. Not a lot of people were around, and if they were, most of them were eunuchs who were trying to keep the walkways relatively clear.
Maomao stopped at the top of the stairs, rubbing her hands together as she looked at him. “Thank you for walking me,” she said.
Jinshi smiled at her, taking her hands in his. He breathed them back to life, one by one, before letting go. “Of course,” he replied sweetly. Maomao’s heart lodged in her throat. “I’ll see you at home.”
“Okay.” She waved a little before turning to the doors. “See you.”
The quiet of the Garnet Pavilion was like the one she felt at home, and she made her way to Ah Duo’s private sitting room, knocking quietly before she let herself in. “Good afternoon,” she said politely, bowing.
Ah Duo and Lady Gyokuyou raised her with laughter and a request for her to lock the door.
“Maomao, you know you don’t have to bow to us,” Lady Gyokuyou said with a giggle. “You are of higher rank than us, you know.”
“Please, don’t bring that up,” Maomao replied with a grimace. She sat down around the table, graciously accepting the cup of tea Ah Duo slid her. “So, is this just a tea party where we can all talk familiarly, or is there a reason you both want to speak to me?”
Ah Duo and Lady Gyokuyou exchanged a glance.
“Has Jinshi-sama talked to you?” Lady Gyokuyou asked hesitantly. “About…”
“Loving me? Yes, he did,” Maomao said flatly. “The first time was after you sent him home drunk. I found him in my workshop crying and asking me whether I'd ever consider loving him as a husband— or rather, even just being fond of him. It was sad to listen to, so I took him back into the house and made him go to sleep.”
Ah Duo leaned forward with a smile. “Now, Maomao, we know you do have no obligation to love him.” Oh no. “It is an arranged marriage after all, and neither of us are of the delusion that all marriages will start and end with love. We are concubines.”
Maomao swallowed. The sip of tea slid down her throat like a solid and left her mouth as dry as it was before.
“But,” Lady Gyokuyou said, “we think that you may be sweet on him.”
Sweet on him, fond of him, in love with him, it’s all the same way of calling something she’d never be. Maomao exhaled, slumping into her arms. She’d never love him the way he loved her.
Ah Duo slid next to her, a hand playing at her neck and the hair on the back of her head. “What’s wrong, Xiaomao?” she murmured. “Did we strike a nerve?”
Maomao tried to nod, then shake her head.
“Well, which one is it?” Lady Gyokuyou asked, sounding faintly amused. She had also dragged her chair over to sit next to Maomao. “Yes or no?”
She didn’t know. She couldn’t say. There was so much that Maomao could be thinking of that she herself didn’t know. There were factors she had to consider, risks she had to manage, feelings that she had to address.
“I can’t be in love with him,” Maomao finally admitted, after a long while. Ah Duo’s hand on her back steadied her. “I don’t think… I’m capable of being in love with him. Or anyone. And even if I felt anything for him, it’d never compare to the way he feels about me.”
Ah Duo hummed. “Did he say something more?”
“This morning.” Maomao felt like she was dying, by the way her heart was squeezing.
She wanted so badly to curl up and keep everything close to her chest, to not say anything. She knew that if she wasn’t married to him, she wouldn’t even feel this way. She wouldn’t have to deal with her heart hurting, or meddlesome concubines, or husbands who look like goddesses that profess love like it’s nothing. Because it wasn’t nothing, not to her. No one had ever said anything like that to her. She came from nothing, so she wasn’t allowed to go for things she wanted. Medicine was the only thing she ever wanted, and partially it was because people never stop getting sick. It was safe. She wouldn’t starve. She couldn’t love anyone or anything as much as Jinshi could, even a fraction. She didn’t deserve him.
“He said…” Maomao pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. God. “He spouted poetry of how he belonged to me. That... that he would always be mine. He compared us to the sun in the sky, monks to their god. He said it would be this way until we died and into the afterlife.” She exhaled. “It’s not that I don’t… he’s a good man. A good husband. He says he loves me so much. Is it possible to love someone so much?” Her voice shook. This wasn’t… good. No. “Because I— I don’t think it’s possible. At least, not for me. I don’t think I can ever love anyone that much. And… that’s not fair to him, is it?”
“Oh, my dear.” Ah Duo drew her in, rubbing slow circles into her back, and Maomao shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t be crying in front of two consorts, but she also really couldn’t care less because her heart hurts and she wished she could just carve it out of her body so she didn’t have to feel it anymore.
She didn’t know how long they let her cry for. Maomao was fairly certain she fell asleep at some point, but everything was the same when she eventually sat up. The sun was still in the sky. Lady Gyokuyou and Ah Duo were still sitting with her. She still felt that horrible, horrible feeling in her chest.
“Maomao,” Lady Gyokuyou began after pouring everyone a little tea. “Has it ever crossed your mind that the reason you’re upset about this is because you do care for him?”
Maomao stared dully into her tea. Her tears were wrung dry, and her eyes felt so… hollow. Foggy. “I probably do,” she mumbled. “Can’t afford anything more than that, though.”
“Why not?”
Because caring for him was easy. Taking care of him was something instinctual, and it didn’t cost any energy to do it. Love was… a luxury. She never learned how to love. She wasn’t sure if she could. Nor if it was something she could learn to do.
“I don’t know.” Maomao waved a hand. “Something. He’s a good… man. I said that. He doesn’t deserve some… half assed attempt at love from a girl from the pleasure district.”
“He loves you,” Lady Gyokuyou said gently.
He did.
He loved her.
He said so himself.
“I don’t know what he did in his past life to deserve a fate like that,” Maomao said. “Must’ve been a war criminal or something. Or done something… really bad.” She noted the concubines’ questioning looks and added, “Because in this life, he loves someone like me. The daughter of a courtesan with syphilis and an asshole with no friends, raised in the gutter along with the rest of the shit and the trash. Thin and flat as a board and crude, likes to experiment poisons on her arm, who doesn’t even have it in her to love him back.”
The two of them must’ve been shocked into silence, because there wasn’t anything else said for a… long time.
Maomao looked up to see them both staring down at the table. She really didn’t have much else to say. “I’m sorry,” so she said quietly, head bowed. “I didn’t mean to say all that. I was rude and undignified. Please, forgive me.”
“It’s… don’t apologize for that,” Lady Gyokuyou said faintly. She shook her head and grasped Maomao’s hands tightly. “You know… you’re very harsh on yourself about this for someone who obviously cares so much about him. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you can’t love him the way he loves you. But you can still care for him the way you’ve been doing.”
Ah Duo nodded. “And you don’t get to choose where you come from, Xiaomao,” she said gently. “I know from experience. Where you come from doesn’t get to dictate how and who you care about. You just have to allow yourself to let go of that so you can feel it.”
Maomao stared at her hands, still clasped within Lady Gyokuyou’s. Maybe they were right, she thought to herself. Maybe. Probably not. But maybe.
Maybe she really would never love him like she wanted to.