Chapter Text
Shaoshang is lying in bed and watching her husband work.
It is a common occurrence, actually.
Sometimes she stays up with him and reads or dreams up new inventions, but most days she is content with gazing at him.
Her husband still reminds her of a marble statue sometimes, with the way his posture and facial expressions never seem to change while he works.
These days, Shaoshang has become an expert at reading his emotions, however subtle his tells might be. Her husband is like an open book for her now.
Her family still has some trouble deciphering Zisheng’s moods whenever they are around. It reminds her of the early days of knowing him, before their betrothal.
He had seemed so unapproachable and cold in many ways that they had all been scared of him.
The thought makes her smile softly to herself. If only she had known how deeply he cared for her from the very beginning, their story could have gone so very differently.
It is a fantasy she indulges in every once in a while, imagining what their lives could have been like if she had realized her feelings for him earlier.
Shaoshang knows that Zisheng had fallen for her right at the start.
He had once told her how he had seen her dancing around the Lantern Festival, smiling brightly at her surroundings. She would often tease her husband that he had fallen in love the first time he had seen her face. Without fail, Zisdheng would smile down at her softly and say that he had been impressed by her even before that, just from hearing her voice in Chengjia Village.
One wouldn’t know it from looking at him, but Shaoshang’s husband could actually be very sweet if he wanted to.
Looking back on it, he had always been strangely focused on her, had appeared wherever she went without fail to keep her out of trouble.
Mother had once made the comparison to a moth circling a lantern, entranced by the light and warmth.
Shaoshang though it strangely fitting, though comparing her husband to a moth was quite silly.
The moon is slowly creeping higher in the sky, but the soft clicking of the bamboo scrolls being opened and closed is relentless. Even though her husband is showing no sign of tiredness, Shaoshang can feel her eyelids growing heavier by the second.
Eventually she stops trying to fight it, instead cuddling down in the soft blankets and closing her eyes, remembering the day she had first spoken to the intimidating General Ling Bu Yi through the barrier of a simple curtain attached to a carriage window.
It had been a simpler time, when she had not known any violence and was not aware of hidden plots for revenge.
How Shaoshang wishes she could go back to those simple days and change events for the better...