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There is a ghost in Huan Hua Palace. The ghost has many names, but Luo Xin calls him A-die. She knows there are probably better words than A-die, like Baba or Gege. But those don’t fit right in her mouth when she thinks of her A-die. Baba is too bubbly and too informal. Luo Xin tried calling him Baba once, but he didn’t like that. That was when her A-die was a little more aware, back before Luo Xin had to start doing his hair for him. “Don’t be childish,” he’d snapped moments after she said it, their previous conversation forgotten. His eyes flashed a venomous green, and Luo Xin understood for a brief moment why her Gege was so obsessed with watching A-die as he slept. When he was awake and aware- really, truly aware- Luo Xin’s A-die was a terrifying thing to behold, a beautiful figure dripping with venom.
Gege didn’t fit, either. That name already belonged to someone. Luo Xin’s Gege was a bit of an idiot, but still, he remained her Gege. He visited rarely, but when he did, he was always accompanied by gifts. Nothing extravagant, he would press small sweets Luo Xin had never heard of into her hands and offer up new robes or soft toys that Luo Xin would carefully find a place for in the small bed she shared with her A-die.
There were other words, too, for what Luo Xin’s A-die was to her. But those words fit him poorly. He was no prim and proper A-Niang, with neatly tailored robes. Nor was he a Mama, who Luo Xin always imagined to be soft and warm. Luo Xin’s A-die was none of those things. The closest he came to anything approximating soft and loving came when he sleepwalked.
Luo Xin had been searching for nearly an hour before she found her A-die. He was barefoot and shivering, his eyes wide and unseeing as he stared at the sky. His hair had begun to go white at some point, and at night, it gave the impression that his normally long, bedraggled, unkempt hair was streaked with moonlight.
“Come on, A-die.” Luo Xin said coaxingly, taking one of her A-die’s thin, beautiful hands in hers. They were big enough that they dwarfed her many times over, calloused and scarred, fingers bent at odd angles where they had been broken and rebroken over the years before being poorly reset.
Luo Xin’s A-die was the most beautiful man in the world, she thought, as she watched him stand in the long abandoned back palace gardens of Huan Hua. His hair was streaked with moonlight, and his inner robes fluttered gauzily in the chilly breeze. She led him back to bed, but not before she heard movement in the trees surrounding them.
“I know you’re there, Gege!” She called out.
Nothing. Luo Xin sighed. “Come on, A-die.” She began to lead him back to their courtyard. “Let’s get back to bed.”
“You’re getting sharper,” Gege said when he approached Luo Xin later, a smirk on his lips.
“You could have come out,” Luo Xin replied, crouching in front of the small fire she’d lit in the small Kang. She did not want to risk lighting the censer, not with the risk of her A-die waking and knocking it over. He had tried to do that a few times. He became uncomfortably fond of fire when he got in odd moods and stopped talking. There were scars on Luo Xin’s small hands where she’d been burned by him before or else burned herself trying to put out whatever he’d lit.
“I fear your Baba would not be excited to see me.” Gege replied.
“He was asleep.” Luo Xin scoffed. “He couldn’t see anything!” She knew that arguing would get her nowhere. It was best that her A-die and Gege never meet. At least, not in any way that her A-die would remember when he awoke. There had been times when Luo Xin was far younger- and far stupider- when she’d managed to trick them into meeting or coaxing them into seeing each other briefly. Every occasion had ended poorly, with Luo Xin’s A-die collapsing or crying until he could no longer breathe, holding Luo Xin so close she forgot what it was to inhale.
Luo Xin slides the kang beneath the bed, where A-die shifts restlessly in his sleep. “He’s not getting better,” She says to her Gege. “Can you tell Lord Luo that? When you see him again?”
That same look flashes across her Gege’s face. He does not like to be reminded of Lord Luo, as if any of them have the luxury of forgetting him. Luo Xin has never met her father. Her other father, that is. She thinks some days she may be better off for it. That maybe, in some small way, it was a mercy to have never known him. It would be crueler if he actually started visiting her A-die. He was in no state to entertain anyone, much less an emperor. On nights, Luo Xin stared at her A-die, his faint outline barely visible in the dark, and she wondered if maybe a visit from Lord Luo would be what finally broke her mother.
Maybe it already had.
When A-die wakes up, he calls Luo Xin by the wrong name and holds her. She has never met Ning Ying Ying, but every time her A-die calls her that name she cannot help but be jealous of her. “Ying Ying,” Her A-die says, taking the wooden comb with the broken teeth in hand, “Let me do your hair.”
It is a slight reversal of their ordinary morning routine. Luo Xin likes it, though. It is nice to have her A-die do her hair, pulling it back into all manner of braids and buns, pinning it into place, or infusing her hair with small amounts of qi to make it stay.
He is tired after that, and Luo Xin eases him back onto the bed. “You ought to be more careful, A-die.” She says quietly. “You know you get sick when you do that.”
“Oh, hush.” A-die waves her off like Luo Xin is a gnat, not a child. “You’re a young lady. You should have nice hair.”
That makes something warm and fluttery rise in Luo Xin’s chest. She is nine years old now. Nowhere close to being a young lady. But still, it is nice to play pretend. To imagine a life better than this one, where she would need her hair done in pretty, elaborate braids and wear pretty gowns with elegant embroidery, and servants would cook her food.
Luo Xin finds her newest robes. The ones that have not been stained by mud and dirt, which seems to pervade her everyday life. They are not fine, but they look pretty enough when she strips down to her inner robes and layers the soft, gauzy greens and pinks over them. She checks her reflection in the mirror, a massive shining bronze thing she likes to keep tucked away so that her A-die cannot become upset with his reflection, searching for invisible flaws. For a moment, Luo Xin lets herself think she is beautiful. She looks anything like her A-die, a lovely moonlit fairy capable of capturing the emperor’s heart for even a night.
Then reality returns and Luo Xin realizes she hasn’t even made breakfast yet.
There is a ghost in Huan Hua Palace. It would be irresponsible of Luo Yun not to investigate. There is no one to tell him no or to warn him to be careful when he leaves his mother’s courtyard, his cultivation manual, and his brand new spiritual sword on his back. At twelve, people have long since stopped trying to reign him in. Maybe it is because he is Luo Binghe’s son. Or perhaps it is because of how much he looks like his uncle. Either way, it works to his benefit. People will not warn him off, and they will blame it on his stubbornness if something happens. He is beholden to no one but himself, which is how he likes it.
Luo Yun spends the day searching Huan Hua Palace for the ghost. The palace itself has been long abandoned. The golden columns and decorations have been stripped of their wealth, and its courtyards and palaces are left to ruin. It would be sad if it weren’t sort of ugly, to begin with, all vaulted ceilings and large, empty foyers that were built to intimidate. Now, stripped of their riches, they are only large and empty, like a dollhouse whose owners had lost all the furniture.
Still, it’s a fun enough way to pass the day. Luo Xun practices his sword forms alone in an empty courtyard and flies above the palace without worrying about anyone else getting in his way. He can even ride his sword down the long, empty corridors without anyone yelling at him for being too unruly. When he grows bored, he pulls out neatly packed rice balls and his latest puzzle box and hunkers down in what must have once been a grand dining hall to solve it without anyone bothering him.
Luo Yun has lots of siblings. They’re not all bad, but they habitually seek him out when they’re bored. The ones who are younger than him make a habit of trying to draw him into their roughhousing, and the older ones dream of nothing but play fighting and showing off whatever clever sword moves they’ve just learned. If given the choice, Luo Yun will always choose to be alone. He does not know when he discovered his passion for puzzles. Or maybe it was when he realized that puzzles didn’t run crying to their nanny whenever he got a little too rough. But Luo Yun likes puzzles. He likes the pretty wooden ones best, the sort that are carved into all sorts of pretty shapes. His favorite is the one that looks like a cow, with all the organs and cuts of meat inside that come out, so he has to reassemble them carefully until they all fit back together. There are others, too. His mother’s clever jewelry boxes with hidden compartments or small wooden cages with odd shapes that he’s meant to carefully extract without breaking anything.
Luo Yun is good at puzzles. He’s not bad at everything else, but puzzles are the one thing he excels at that no one else does
“You’re doing it wrong,” A voice rings out in the silence of the long-abandoned dining hall. Luo Yun jumps, half expecting a monster or, worse, his father.
Except it’s just a girl. She’s young. About as old as Luo Yun’s little sisters, though he cannot quite tell how old. “Are you the ghost?” He asks immediately. “I thought you’d be older.”
“I’m not a ghost,” The girl pouts. “I’m Luo Xin.”
That seems wrong. “You shouldn’t lie about something like that,” Luo Yun tells her seriously. “I know all of the princes and princesses, and you’re not one of them.”
“That’s because I’m not a princess,” Luo Xin replies. “And I’m not a liar!”
“Do you live here?” Luo Yun asked suspiciously. Maybe she was some sort of monster. He knew a lot about monsters; plenty of them used human shapes to trick people.
“No. I live in a courtyard,” Luo Xin replies obstinately. “Why are you here?”
“I’m looking for a ghost.” Luo Yun tells her, trying to picture the vague outline of his father. The effortless confidence people have always told him stories about.
“What’s your name?” Luo Xin asks, drawing closer. She plucks the puzzle from Luo Yun’s hands. It’s another one of those cage puzzles, a small tiger wedged inside. The goal is to wriggle it out. Luo Yun had tried every trick he could think of to get the tiger out. He watched as Luo Xin wriggled the lion, pulling out first a leg, then, gradually, the rest of him until the head got stuck. She frowned at the puzzle- what a delightful frown it was. Everything about her features seemed thin and delicate, breakable in the same way that many of Luo Yun’s stepmothers were.
“Luo Yun,” He says, unable to stop himself from uttering the truth, no matter how foolish he knew it was.
Then, somehow, the tiger was out. She handed the cage back to Luo Yun, examining the tiger with such a sweet smile on her face that Luo Yun could not help but feel his stomach curdle at the thought of asking for the tiger back. “Are you my brother?” She asks sweetly, and Luo Yun knows he should say no. That he should leave this girl alone. For a reason, she is in Huan Hua Palace, left to rot with the rest of the place. But he cannot stop himself from telling her:
“You can call me Gege.”