Chapter Text
Prologue Too little, too much
To say that he walked into the royal palace would give him too much credit; to use a kind word, he “waddled” in; to use an unkind one, he had stumbled in like a drunk duckling. The said stumbling man was Zhao Gao, who he had been before did not matter much, not, most likely, what he would become. He was a eunuch now, and eunuchs were never meant to be more than quiet and diligent shadows in a court full of people fighting tooth and nail for an ounce of attention from the young King, as odd as that might sound to anyone outside of the court. He did not anticipate a glamorous future for himself, he had never really done so, not in Qin anyway. As the sharp pain between his tired legs reminded him, he was in a limbo, not quite a man nor a woman. He would never have children of his own, nor lie with a woman… not that he had ever done so anyway, but if before his castration he had not much cared for it, being deprived of the possibility irrationally annoyed him. In any case, it was too late to go back, he shook his head (probably looking like a lunatic to everyone on the long staircase), he was too proud to let what he had or did not have in his robes define his existence.. Although he was petty enough to hold a grudge against Qin for having putted him in that situation.
With renewed fervor, he started climbing up the stairs again, but as it happens, too much fervor was as bad as too little, and the sadly familiar pang of discomfort that came with moving too fast made itself known. With a grunt of discomfort, he was forced to scale the climbing down a notch, how anyone could get used to that was beyond him. He would have to ask a senior eunuch if there was a trick to get it to stop being so painful, or if he should just start drinking; it was embarrassing, but he could swallow his pride to live a relatively normal life.
“What have I put myself into…?” he murmured under his breath as he turned to look at the hustle and bustle of the courtyard below him. It was such a mess, and yet he was thankful that the noise was muffling his musings.