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Chapter Text

The chandeliers glitter like falling stars.

Beneath them, the guests shine brighter.

The great ballroom of the viscount house had been converted into a reception space for tonight’s gathering; A political gala disguised as an evening of art, wine, forgotten conversations , fake gasps and generous flirtations.

Every man and woman wearing a new face matching their new dresses, to hide their own clawed torn skins.

And among them, draped in midnight and nouveau riche , enters Mo Ran.

He does not belong here. He knows it very well and they know it too.

The old money noble men smack their wine-wet lips and glance at him with arrogance meanwhile their wives' lacy voices flutter and their gazes linger for too long on his broad shoulders and strong thighs as Mo Ran passes by.

He is dressed in the latest design, the diamond buttons of his dark coat twinkle in the candlelight which match the glimmers of the eyes of those noble men's daughters, but yet his foreign name tastes like dust and clay in their mouths when they speak of him from behind their decorated silk fans.

Duke Mo. The new owner of the gold mines of western region.

The business itself comes of a long old history unlike his own lineage that's been kept unstoried, too short and untraceable that he doesn't even know his father's surname and has no blood family to fall back on.

Being only an adopted son of the previous Duke of West, It gives everyone present in this gilded cage a platform to stand above him and look down on him from.

But yet Mo Ran walks ahead powerfully into the room, amongst the same crowd after 5 years of staying away.

His steps heavier, slower and louder. The title he bears, might still feel borrowed to him, it might still prick his skin like a fancy cloak worn by a man who only knows sleeping in rugs, But God forbid if Mo Ran lets anyone see that hesitancy on his face.

These aristocrats sneer at his audacity but no one dares to go head to head and shoulder to shoulder with him.

Because it's an open secret that if anything in this kingdom contains more gold than Mo Ran's treasury, it would only be the gold mines he owns.

It makes them feel inferior, makes their skin crawl but the truth wont change so they turn away when Mo ran meets their eyes with the same fire. They wash their disgusts with another glass of wine that matches the duration of their legacy.

“Mo Ran, you came after all,” A voice called, brushing against his arm. It was Mark Winstone, eldest son of Viscount Winstone, heir to the northwest silk trades, the host of the party.

A wolf with too much powder on his face and not enough whiteness in his teeth to match.

Mo Ran nods his head. “Wouldn't miss it. The chandelier above alone is worth the invitation.”

Mark snorts into his drink. “That thing? It’s older than the town's watch tower. I am surprised it hasn’t come crashing down on some poor bastard’s head yet.”

Suddenly he leans closer, fumes of liquor and strong perfumes curling off him like needles. “Have you seen him yet?”

Mo Ran only raises an eyebrow. immediately into useless chatter. huh. but it does suit his greasy personality.

Mark's eyes glitters. “The Crown Prince" he presses on , "It should be the first time you get to see him after you returned from Rufeng ? No? "

Ah.

Of course. The Crown Prince. The chief guest or the unanimously decided jester of this gathering and more of.

Crown Prince is someone who wouldn't miss a single party of the kingdom no matter how wasteful it is for his "busy" schedule or how unwanted his presence is. It is meant to signal his fitness to ascend the throne.

But it only served to churn fresh gossips for this aristocratic heirs while they sip on champagne and pass their neverending leisure time; about his indulgences, his lackings, his eccentric habits. Every time, they gather like vultures to pick apart his body before he is even dead.

“How much could he have even changed in 5 years” Mo Ran says, sipping his drink coolly, to show his boredom.

But Mark grins like a hyena. “Wait till you get a proper look. It was a change that shook the ground of the entire sisheng. It's like he went to sleep one night and… I don’t know ... Just woke up with a soul of a new human. Or maybe that's just who he always was but he just went public with his ... Interesting... bedroom habits" Mark's mouth curled. "That way i guess it would be easier to lure more baits... Utterly depraved.”

“Depraved?” Mo Ran repeats, but his tone did not shift.

He really was not that interested to know what measly informations Mark has in store. Because Mo ran already knows what he should know.

He should have arrived by now. Mo Ran thinks.

But Mark mistakes Mo Ran's indifference for curiosity. “Oh, you’ve no idea,” He laughs, nudging mo ran’s elbow. “They say he doesn’t sleep alone. Ever. A new man every week. he takes them to his chambers like a cat brings birds home by its pangs. He plays with them until he gets bored or the toy breaks beyond repair which happens more often that not. The foot guard says his sheets never cool."

"I have even heard he has a ledger" A new voice joins in after hearing Mark talk. "A real one. Where he keeps the names , dates , details of what the lap boy was best at and also the plays that pushed the lad to far"

Mo Ran only glances at the direction of the voice but never meets the person's eyes. His pettiness got the best of him when he recognised it was the new Marquis of the house of Elridge, renowned for their vast variety of coal mine expansing all across the southeast region.

Mo Ran remembers that the Marquis hadn't even nodded back at him when Mo Ran had joined the table. So Mo Ran doesn't give him the taste of his attention. not that Marquis Elridge seems to care as he continues "And he will be a king one day. Can you imagine?".

Sounds of stiffled giggles follow to show support to his statement. 

This conversation is too oily, too vulgar and going in a dangerous territory for Mo Ran to join back in.

So he reclines in the velvet plush and sips on his own drink quietly. Despite his non chalant facade, he continues to feel the wine thick with a strange taste. As always, it tastes like rot to him.

The orchestra plays something soft, elegant, and old. It is a song for the noble blood , their history , their arrogance, their silk, their centuries of looking down on short and severed lineage like Mo Ran's.

A sudden silent uproar sweeps the ballroom, loud whispers bouncing of the walls. It piqued Mo Ran's attention when the crowd starts parting to make way for the new arrival.

Matching the gentle strings of the sitar, walks a man draped in silver-white, with a waistcoat embroidered in muted cream colored silk, and gloves so sheer the hands seem crystallised with moonlight.

Prince Chu Wanning.

He does not not need any announcement. He could silently sneak right in and still would command the attention of the audience.

He walks like a man used to being followed by people's curious gazes, his chin tilted high, eyebrow dagger sharp, his dark lashes lowered in calculated disinterest. His long black hair, braided from the junction of his neck cascading down his spine, shimmering like licquorice. Whispers of hair around his forehead giving his face a illusion of a halo.

A single haitang blossom is pinned to his lapel - out of season, yet unnervingly perfect. It blooms in his all white outfit potraying him as the innocence of first snow.

Mo Ran's breath stills in his throat. Static rhythms start in the caves of his ribs.

Mo Ran thinks it is not just that Prince Wanning is beautiful, though he is. It is that he moves like myth. As though each step on the marble floor is an afterthought, As though his body has been born from paint and candlewax. As though his crafter had prayed restlessly and relentlessly before breathing life into him.

He is the kind of man Mo Ran had spent years learning to hate but he never pictured a face onto the target of his cruelest thoughts.

And now Mo Ran feels relieved for not daring to do so. Because a man like him who has crawled out of the gutter he was born in, merely a decade ago, who has yet to step a foot outside the south continent, he could never imagine something so otherworldly.

“Well,” Mark says, elbowing mo ran with a leer. “Told you. He has turned into a serpent basking under moon's blessing. A ghost in gold i tell you"

Mo Ran replies nothing. He does not even acknowledge the vowels coming to him from all directions. He is in a trance. He gets snapped out of his stupor only when prince wanning turns his head and their eyes meet.

And in that moment, only silence exists. And light. And prince’s rosy lips that's too still for someone whose name is currently in everyone mouth, whose reputation is made only of scandals.

Prince's gaze flicks once, down Mo Ran's form, then returns to Mo Ran's eyes. Not in mockery. Not even in sinisterity . Simply … In recognition.

Then the prince turns, says something to his steward, and moves into the crowd in the arms of a blonde man who is not even worth anyone's blink.

No one can tell what that man is even wearing, or maybe it is just the case for Mo Ran. Because to him, prince's light has engulfed anything that is in reach.

Mark whistles low. "Careful. That look’s how he reels them in.”

And in that instant, something old and silent stirrs in Mo Ran. Something he doesn't like. so he laughs it off.

what he says out loud : useless.

what he thinks: beautiful.

But the world is already full of beautiful things that rot.

Mo Ran drains the remaining of his drink.

He should leave now.

But he does not. He can not

Not when his most favourite scent ; fragrance of fresh haitang is still clinging on the air around him.

Chapter Text

“…an heir who’s never led a council, nor a war.”

"Has led enough sodomite assemblies though."

The tables erupts in laughter. A rich, rolling wave that echoes off the marble floors. Some dabbing their eyes with embroidered handkerchiefs.

Mo Ran doesn't join them. He sits apart silent, his eyes sharp with contempt.

He hadn’t come to listen to the filth gossip of these heirs and heiresses. These simple minded babblings. Their attempts to look unworried. How they talk about the Crown Prince loudly and daringly and laugh at him boisterously as though they know he hears it all and yet he simply doesn't care. So neither do they.

But in Mo Ran's eyes that's what makes the Crown Prince dangerous, makes himself feel cautious.

Mo Ran’s eyes drifts toward the Crown Prince, who sat reclined in the corner beside his paramour. Despite the brightness of the room, his presence cuts through with a sharpness - like moonlight spilling over a darkened courtyard, cool and mesmerizing. calm and unmistakable.

This time, Mo Ran allows himself to really look.

The prince’s lips are a shade redder as if stained with wine or berries, yet there is nothing vulgar about it. It just adds more to his allure. His gloved hands moves with graceful boredom - accepting greetings and flattery. Corner of his lips bear a small quirk but his eyes empty and hollow. He looks at the flatterers who almost prostrated themselves to catch his whims, in dismissive way as if he knows none a man before him neither fear nor respect him.

A pair of younger noblemen tries to grease more and start a conversation with him. Mo Ran cant hear them but he sees Crown Prince's lips move and the men laugh, but their shoulders tense and eyes lower - embarrassed. The Prince probably had said something sharp with a veiled cruelty.

Like Mark said , A serpent.

Mo Ran won't waste any more of his time in this parlour. He was here to draw lines, not waste them.

These cowards he shares the table with, dressed in finest brocade, were only born into power but never learnt how to weild it. Whispering complaints about the unruly Crown Prince over their flutes of champagne but never move a finger to shape the empire’s future. Call him unfit behind closed doors but when it comes to actually doing something - using their power or influence to remove him - they fall silent. Too comfortable or too afraid to act.

But Mo Ran would act. He would strike. And for that, he needs to find his keys.

More precisely — he needs one .

His gaze slides across the ballroom, past silk trains, marble pillars , until it lands on the man near the arched windows on the opposite side of the hall, back facing Mo Ran but still enough for Mo Ran to recognise him by the regality in the posture or perhaps by shadows of a bigger crowd than the Crown Prince have

The Grand Duke, Huaizui , The Owner of Silver Seal and Keeper of the Royal Treasury.

And also the Crown Prince’s uncle, heir presumptive should anything befall the prince.

He has lands, soldiers, and enough pride to want the throne even if he denied it aloud.

It is perfect. What Mo Ran needs isn't loyalty. He needs cover. A foundation on where Mo Ran and his flag bearers of the new day will step on.

If their rebellion is going to bleed into the capital, someone has to stand in front of it. Someone suspicious enough to be blamed. Someone the Empire already feared.

The Grand Duke was perfect candidate.

But Huaizui is the type of man who needs careful watching. He hasn't aged only in riches but also in sharpness.

The man is rigid in tradition and steel in gaze. A nightmare of order.

One wrong move and everything will fall apart.

Mo Ran adjusts the fall of his sleeve, smoothens the front of his coat and steps forward.

It is time to speak and to be remembered.

“The drought has ruined the canals. It's not only affecting livelihoods but also the trades with neighbouring countries" The aging marquis sighs and drags a puff from his cigar. "We consider ourselves lucky when we can sail with even half of the goods." 

“We have shifted to the roads, but the guilds won’t adjust their tariffs.” says a viscount from beside him, his lip curling with frustration.

"Yes, the guilds,” the marquis continues again, with a thin smile. "The guilds have raised tariffs so sharply. I’d sooner send wagons if it was not impossible to move goods without bleeding coin at every checkpoint. It’d be miracle if anything is left by the time it reaches at my region.”

The Grand Duke reclines, one gloved finger tapping the rim of his glass and the other steady on his ivory wolf emblemed cane . “The guilds, for all their faults, have long overseen the flow of trade. One could argue it protects our markets from chaos.”

The Grand Duke rested his glass on the table, his tone calm.

“We are a cautious empire” he says. “That is a burden but also our strength."

“Pardon the interference, Your Grace,” Mo Ran interrupts not sounding the least bit sorry. “But strength isn’t measured by how long you keep things away from falling apart." His voice cut clean through, low and certain.

The corner goes silent. Huaizui turned his head slightly but doesn't ask Mo Ran to stop and so neither does anyone else.

Mo Ran takes it as a cue. He approaches with calculated humility. He stands in front of the crowd that is still deciding, still assesing.

Mo Ran bows just enough to be polite, but not enough to show weakness. Each motion crafted to remind the room that he hadn’t stumbled into this circle - he’d chosen to walk into it.

And now that he had the stage, he intends to use it.

“The real problem isn’t the drought or tariffs. It's the fear of change and competition. The guilds used to create wealth. Now they block it. They hoard power instead of pushing forward. they won't budge an inch until competition leaves them no choice."

Mo Ran’s voice stays steady. “Let smaller merchants trade. Open some parts for foreign investors and break the guild monopoly."

A few nobles looks up sharply; one sets his glass down too hard. “You would have us dismantled centuries of order, tear down the system that has been existing since the beginning of this empire?” someone asks in a gruff.

These fools! Of course they would abide by the bygones, even it bleeds them dry.

“I would turn liabilities into a leverage." Mo Ran takes the upperhand back again.

"The merchants living on the far age of the empire have turned into beggars under the thumb of guilds. They are now desperate and determined enough to take any risk. They are only waiting for a direction and they will give their loyalty to anyone who will show it to them." Moran finishes with practiced smoothness.

Every word had been chosen, every pause thought out. There was no brashness in his tone - didn’t need to raise his voice to command the room. He simply spoke like someone who knows the weight of gold, of influence, He mastered all of it.

There is, after all, a reason he is the richest man in this nobleman's gathering. His business flourished where others floundered. And though he only stands only one step below Grand Duke.

It is by choice - for now.

Crowd's eyes and as well as Mo Ran's flicker to Grand Duke, Huazui who still hasn't moved; his gaze, pale and unreadable. But Mo Ran's focus is only on the slim amusement on Huaizui's face.

Then Huaizui gives a single amused exhale. “You are the Mo boy, aren’t you? The one with new money and no pedigree.” Unmistakeble sharp glint in his eyes.

But Mo Ran’s smile doesn't falter. “New money tends to shine the brightest, Your Grace. No rust.”

Laughter again. This time sharper, laced with something warmer - interest. The Grand Duke’s lips only twitch.

“Clever. Very clever.” But there is ice in his tone now, arrogant and deliberate. “Tell me, Duke Mo, is it cleverness or desperation that makes a man without lineage seek out a place among those born with it?”

Mo Ran knows the trap. He feels its teeth waiting for him, sharpened with history.

He doesn't step back.

“Neither,” he says, voice still dripping with honey, never giving out a hint of the waves of anger that has started in his heart , tearing it apart and roaring inside his brain. “It’s vision."

"Vision?" The Grand Duke gives a low laugh. First one of the night, “You only sound like a man trying to prove a point.”

Mo Ran meets his gaze without blinking. “No, Your Grace. I sound like a man who already has.”

Around the room, the old names shift, watching him more closely now. For the first time all evening, no one looks bored.

“Bold,” Huaizui murmurs. “Perhaps dangerously so.”

Mo Ran smiles unfazed. “Danger breeds change. And change breeds empire, Your Grace.

Let the best minds rule, Your Grace, we can rebuild kingdom from its ruins.”

The room falls silent, the old order unsettled by the promise of a new one. A few nobles shifts uncomfortably in their seats, unsure whether to nod in agreement or sneer in disdain. The Grand Duke, Huaizui, however, remains still, his gaze lingering on Mo Ran as though weighing a strange, unfamiliar artifact.

Then, with the slow grace of someone used to control, the Grand Duke picks up his glass, takes a sip and offers a small hum over the blood red liquid - polite, but without warmth.

“You speak well, Lord Mo,” he says, the emphasis on ‘Lord’ almost too precise, like a mockery. “Very well, in fact. I imagine your ideas will stir applause in livelier salons - among younger company, perhaps. Men with fewer responsibilities.”

It starts a faint ripple of laughter - but restrained, only an act of obedience.

“Still, it’s always good to hear fresh voices. Reminds us of the… energy of youth. But managing an empire, I’m afraid, is not the same as dreaming one.”

The Grand Duke moves back his chair, back facing Mo Ran again, a gesture of dismissal so obvious. Huaizui then gestures to a footman. “Would someone see that Lord Mo is offered something to drink? He’s come a long way to teach us our own domain's business, after all.”

Mo Ran holds his ground for one breath, two.

Then he gives a small bow - perfectly measured, again, not too deep. “Of course, Your Grace. I understand caution. It’s served many well. Did to me too, until i realised only risks would ensure me success"

And with that, he steps back, the conversation already shifting without him. But not before several pairs of eyes follows his retreat - some curious, some wary.

An one pair in them belonging to someone who would one day send a storm through his life so devastating, no part of him would ever be left untouched.

Mo Ran acts like nothing had happened. He smiles, drinks, and slips through conversations with effortless charm - as if he hadn’t just been measured and rebuffed. As if his thoughts aren't boiling.

Every toast, every empty compliment, feels like a match to dry straw.

Later, when the hall thinned and the music dulled, he slips away for the balcony. He pushes through the heavy doors, and lets the cold night air snap him clean out of his fury. Outside, the capital glitters like spilled diamonds under frost.

This is worse.

His hands grips the stone railing until his knuckles whitenes. The smooth chill of the marble steadies him, but it does not quiet the fury.

The Grand Duke had dismissed him. The man looked at him once, saw the shine without the lineage, and turned away.

He had known. He had known the Grand Duke would be difficult - proud, guarded, contemptuous of anyone not born with their family crest stamped on their forehead. But to be so thoroughly and artfully dismissed by layered insults -

It makes his skin crawl.

Not with hurt. Not anymore.

Just with anger and bloodthirst

He can't lose control, not yet. He exhales. breath coming out fogged like white smoke in the winter dark.

Behind him, the ballroom pulsed with music and laughter and the doors slides open. Then come the footsteps. Light. Soft as falling snowflakes.

Next comes the voice smooth as exotic brewed tea but cool as silk.

“You left the party too soon, Duke Mo.”

Mo Ran turns and sees him. Prince Wanning.

The bright expensive chandelier that Mo Ran offhandedly had praised did no justice on accentuating his beauty. Under the moonlight, He looks like a blessing from gods. His face so unnatural and perfect, it seemed less born , more imagined, as if a fevered poet’s vision had stepped out from the inked pages of his most romantic verse. It is not tender - but yet so inviting .

Mo Ran closes his eyes to get out of the hypnosis he once again fell under. “Your Highness.”

“Wanning,” the prince corrects lazily. He walks closer, his heels click and clack on the concrete on the same pace of Mo Ran's heartbeat.

"All the ladies inside started lamenting over your absence. ”

Mo Ran snorts. “And you?” he asks half-spitefully. “Did you wish to see me too, Your Highness?”

The Crown Prince notices the dismissal and steps closer. Just slightly. And Mo Ran feels ashamed to realise he wants to take step forward too.

“I’ve never needed to wish,” the prince slurs.

Mo Ran can now clearly see how the wine's red have left Wanning's lips only leaving a natural pink softness behind.

Mo Ran laughs once, "Right! Right! It's other people who throw themselves at your way wishing to catch your glance, isn't it?"

"What happened to the one you had brought tonight? It'd be quite embarrassing if he had already ran away, Your highness."

Mo Ran is playing with fire. He knows it too. But it's so addicting and quite thrilling.

Prince Wanning has been the main character of Mo Ran's every thought for the past decade. Mo Ran has tied his entire life around this very man in a twisted knot.

A sharp thrill that wrenches through his veins and hold him captive when Mo Ran is forced to admit Wanning is the center of Mo Ran’s world, the dark flame around which all his future also revolves. He obsesses over extinguishing this fire.

So the first touch to the flame feels like a cruel and fun game to him even as he fears the flames will consume him and leave not even ash for the winds to scatter.

Twinkles in the prince's endless dull eyes, reflection of the cluster of stars above. “Why do you want to know? Interested to take his place?”

“Hm.” A pause. Then - so lightly it could’ve been mistaken, “That can be arranged.”

Mo Ran’s breath hault. What?

It wasn’t just the implication. It was the ease that confused Mo Ran. Finding no other way to deflect and unsure if it was even meant to be taken seriously, Mo Ran says after a breath of silence , "You jest, Your highness. I was just being idly curious."

The prince lets out a smooth chuckle - not warm, not amused, but practiced. He steps forward, gliding past Mo Ran with the slow confidence and complete silence. He leans over the marble railing, hands resting lightly before tapping.

Once. Twice. Thrice

Tap Tap Tap

His long, inky hair sways forward, catching the night breeze - a dark curtain swallowing the pale gleam of the lone haitang flower pin over his breast pocket.

Every movement is too precise. As though he’s counting his words in his head, as though he’s acted this scene before in a play.

“Jest, you say.” His voice is soft now. “I’d assume you know about jesting rather well… for someone who used to entertain his brother’s parties by pretending to be a dog."

The words land like a hammer on a glass and breaking in the fragile quiet. Mo Ran’s spine immediately stiffens. A chill run down his back - not from the air, but from instinct. Recognition. Dread. They coil around his bones

Mo Ran must have heard wrong. He prays he heard wrong.

“I don’t understand,” he says, voice carefully even, but delayed. His throat tightens, bile threatening, and he swallows it down like poison.

“Your Highness. You’d have to be… a bit clearer.”

“I was trying to remember,” The prince says, voice careless, like idle gossip drifting through the snow. “Where I’d seen you before.”

He turns unhurried. “Then it came back to me. That one of those private parties of The Mo family's late son."

Mo Ran keeps his gaze fixed on the assessing gaze of the cruel prince. That stare isn’t just watching him; it’s peeling him back. His pulse already spiked high causes his blood to thunder in his veins. His vision begins to blur at the edges.

And yet, his ears are sharp.

They pick up everything. The rustle of Prince's silk vest, the brittle hush of the night wind, and most of all, the quiet horrifying truth of his shame now floating loose in the chilled air like smoke.

“There was a dog,” The prince continues, almost absently. “A costumed one. Muzzled, collared" He pauses just long enough to make the next part more cruel. “He would walk on all fours towards whoever was tugging the leash. Obedient little thing. The young nobles adored him that night”

The he adds, “He even had dog ears stitched on" 

His voice never once been cruel - just indifferent, steady - like he was reciting a dull observation. As if he wasn’t unfurling a memory that shook Mo Ran to his marrow.

And that bothered Mo Ran the most. His hands curled tightly at his sides, nails digging crescent-shaped dents into his palms.

Pain bloomed - sharp but grounding

Mo Ran’s voice finally cracks the silence, " That wasn’t me.”

The prince blinks, slowly. “No?”

“I was adopted into the Mo family when I was seventeen. I don’t know what stories you’ve heard, but you’ve got the wrong person.” The words comes too fast. He hears them shaking even as he tried to lace them with calm.

Inside his chest, shame keeps crawling up - That party had been years ago. That life - that filthy, crawling, shame-drenched day - had been buried in a grave with his name. He had made himself clean that day and born into someone else.

Noone could have remembered .

Mo Ran forces himself once again to lift his chin under the prince’s watching gaze. “You’re mistaken,” he repeats. “Whoever you think you saw - it wasn’t me.”

At this point, he doesn't know who he is trying to convince.

The prince or himself.

Crown Prince fixed his eyes on his eyes with quiet precision.

“Violet eyes,” he says softly. “I am not one to forget such unique color"

Mo Ran freezes again.

And yet. This prince. This cold-eyed, beautiful thing, had seen him once. And remembered him. Till this day.

The prince looks at him with no emotion in his stare, just the cold detachment of a man who already knows the answer.

“But if it were you,” he says calmly, “I'd have plenty of reasons to pretend it's wasn't.”

Panic scrapes at Mo Ran's ribs. He wills for his mouth to work but he can't. His tongue feels too thick, his throat too tight. Even breathing feels dangerous.

“But don’t worry,” Wanning continues, his voice ice and steel, “I can be discreet..... unless I'm given a reason not to be.”

Wanning studied him looking through the crack on the mask Mo Ran has been wearing all night. "And my chamber can hold many secrets... Do we understand, Duke Mo?"

At Wanning's repulsive confession- something darker start squirming in Mo Ran. He feels it curdle in his gut- it's not fear anymore, but a deep, crawling hatred, sharp enough puncture out of his skin and rot the vile man in front of him.

Mo ran understood what the prince was saying. A bedchamber invitation wrapped in cold threat. He understood this cruelty too well.  

Fragments of the past keep swirling behind his eyelids but his mind is still clear with one thing.

Revenge.

Chapter Text

He was born in a house of painted lips and fake laughter, where the scent of wine clung to silks. but nothing– nothing— has ever managed to drown the stench of cheap perfume and regret. The women there wore their smiles like masks, lips red as fate, and told stories with music because words were never enough.

They called him Xiao-Ran , a name soft enough for a child but the absence of father's name was obvious. It confused him why his name had only one syllable unlike his mother's. He didn't understand he was just unlucky enough to be born in the hollow between a woman’s broken sob and a man’s lust.

Xiao Ran remembered his mother-what a soft woman she had been once- now had grown callouses from being on her knees. He remembered that because he did not want to.

He remembered how her hair was black like spilled ink, always damp from sweat and wine. She painted her face with rouge that cracked by morning and her voice was hoarse from singing all night in a fragile truce between incense and decay.

He remembered her pipa, the way it sounded in his mother’s hands. She plucked its strings like brushing tears off a lover’s cheek- tender and aching. One courtesan auntie once told xiao ran that his mother used to make generals weep with her playing and made poets scratch out entire verses because they could never write a line as beautiful as the way her wrists moved when she danced.

He remembered her name. it was Duan Yihan. She told Xiao Ran once, when he was five and feverish, that it meant “clothed on cold.” He had replied her then, delirious and shivering, it didn't make sense to him. His mom softly smiled and touch his nose the same way she touches her pipa, like he is her most precious possession, and said "Name doesn't matter down here, A-ran, surely it's meaning doesn't either."

But once, her life did had a meaning when a man had come into the brothel wrapped in foreign silk brocade. He was from Linyi, a nobleman with a silver tongue and lies sharpened like needles. He promised her the romance. Promised her an estate in the eastern valleys, a garden for her pipa, a life away from grabby hands and lust stares. He said he loved her. And in return, she gave him everything she had– her body, her heart, and the fragile trust a woman only ever gives once.

He had taken what he wanted and left the rest behind.

At first, she sent letters. Then messengers. Then, wrapped in every ounce of pride she had left, she went to his estate herself just to tell him she was with his child- only to be turned away at the gates, her name spat out like rotten rice.

"She kicked and spat back right on that gate. What a feisty one!" , his courtesan aunties lowly laughed as they retold the infamous story to Xiao Ran. A child his age, only eight shouldn't be the one to hear this story. But the bliss of ignorance didn't exist in that crook of two stone alleys in the Red Lantern Quarter.

Xiao Ran still remembers how the light of his mother's soul- the best thing in his life- slowly left her eyes that winter. Illness came fast and bitter. Her skin, once the envy of moonlight, turned grey. Her limbs moved like broken reeds. Her body had begun to break. She coughed blood into linen and smiled with cracked lips. No doctor came. No nobleman paid for her healing. There were days she didn’t get out of bed. The brothel owner only coldly said she was not in condition to work anymore. There was always another girl to be painted, another drink to pour.

In those days, the mother and son shared the little bowl of food that would be sneaked to them daily by the kind courtesans. It was not enough to fill the stomach of a growing boy but he always told her he wasn’t hungry. She would smile weakly and stroke his hair. “My little prince,” she’d whisper. “One day, you’ll have more than this.”But Xiao Ran never asked for more not when hunger is loud , not even when winter is cruel. Until his mother body weakened like a dying branch.

Xiao Ran was too small to work. Too afraid to ask the kitchen again. So he tried to steal some foods for his mother.

There was a room in the back where the nobles stayed and xiao ran, trembling in his thin tunic, crept through the open door of an empty room like a shadow, eyes fixed on the half-eaten meat bun on the tray. He reached out-

“What the hell are you doing?!”The voice shattered the silence like drum. A man stood at the door, red-faced and drunk, his belt loose and his rage palpable.

Xiao Ran froze. He tried to run, but the man grabbed his collar. “Thieving brat! Filthy little rat!” the noble dragged him to the courtyard, cursing up a storm. Xiao Ran with his tiny hands and tinier stature couldn't stand a chance, so he could only shake like a leaf in that storm. The drunken man had enough was not done and raised his hand. “Do you know who I am?! I’ll-”

“STOP!”

The voice that rang out next wasn’t one of the begging courtesan's. It was his mother’s. She was barefoot, her hair unkempt, gasping from the cold. She fell between them like a ghost, arms wide.

“He’s my son,” she pleaded. “Please- please, he’s just a little child.”

“He’s a thief!” the noble roared. “Your bastard whelp tried to steal from me. He should be whipped!”

“He was hungry,” Yihan said, voice breaking, “Please…”

But drunk men don’t like to be contradicted. Especially not by fallen women with hollow cheeks and a cough.

“I want them gone,” he sneered at the madam. “Both of them. Now.”

The madam of the brothel, a thin woman with a face like old paper, looked at the two of them- sick woman and skinny boy and gave a sigh sharp as winter wind. “Out,” she said. “You heard him.”

And so they were thrown out into the snow. Yihan had a few coins left, saved penny by penny for Xiao Ran's future. It was just enough for a shack near the river. Its roof leaked. The wind came in through cracks in the wall. But it was shelter and it was theirs.

Xiao Ran kept apologizing clutching to her skirt like it was his lifeline. “Mother, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just wanted to help”

But Yihan never scolded him. She slowly held his hand, her own thin fingers trembling. With a soft kiss as light as feathers, “Don't cry , my brave boy,” she said. “My little prince. Mother is never angry with you"

Those were her last better days.

Winter thickened while his mother's breath turned thinner. At night, he pressed his ear to her chest, just to make sure her heart still beat. She no longer had the strength to open her eyes, but she would still smile when he whispered, “I brought food.” just to appease him.

And he tried. God, he tried. He would sneak out as dawn split the sky, clutching a torn sack in his hand. He begged at the market, followed behind old women, hoping they’d drop a piece. Sometimes he’d dart into an alley, chase a stray dog from its scrap and run. Most times, he came home empty-handed.

Once, a kind baker’s wife gave him half of a bread. He carried it home like a jewel, sliced it into thin pieces with a splintered knife he once found on the road and held each slice to his mother’s lips. She could barely chew. “Delicious,” she murmured and caressed his cheeks. He tried not to cry. He swallowed every sob like sand.

Another day, desperate, he ran to the apothecary. Clutching a copper coin, a kid had droped on the street, amount that wasn’t even enough for salt, he begged on his knees. “My mother’s sick. Please. Just something-anything.”

The man shoved him aside with the toe of his boot. “You street rat! I don't own a charity. Give me the appropriate amount or get out!”

Xiao Ran got up, bleeding from the hand. He tried again. Another blow. The third time, he was hit so hard, he blacked out in the snow.

When he came to, hours had passed. His hands were stiff. His face was crusted with dried blood and tears. He stumbled back toward the shack.

It was quiet.

His pulses stilled.

It was too quiet.

“Mother?”

The wind answered. The door creaked. He stepped inside, heart in his throat.

His mother lay still. Her arms folded neatly. Her lips parted in a faint smile, as if she had just told him one last lullaby. Her eyes were closed, lashes dark against pallid skin. Xiao Ran stood there motionless for a long time. Not breathing, Not blinking, Just watching the death.

Then, silently, he crawled into the bedding beside her, wrapped his small arms around her stiff frame and laid his cheek against her chest. No more of her faint heartbeats. He only clutched her tighter.

She was cold. But in his heart, he still felt her warmth. He slept with dreaming of how she once danced with jasmine in her hair.

He woke to the sound of silence again. The world was too bright. His stomach growled, but he couldn’t feel it. What he did feel was the heavy weight of something permanent, something that would never change.

He had no money - to give his mother a funeral or even buy a coffin. But still there was something he could try. So, he took her body, wrapped her in the torn golden threaded shawl she used to wear when performing. The colors had faded, but they still shimmered faintly in the light. He found a rusted cart behind the shack and with trembling arms, lifted her onto it. The effort nearly broke his back. She was heavier than he expected. Or maybe he was just too small, too weak, too powerless.

He tied the shawl around her so she wouldn’t feel cold, then gripped the wooden handles and began to push. It took him a full day to reach Linyi. The cart wobbled across stones, through mud, over ice. He slipped more than once, scraping his knees bloody. He didn’t stop. Not when his legs buckled. Not when passersby stared and turned away.

He reached the gates of the nobleman by sunset. The guards bored and smoking, scooted away when they saw him as if his grief was contagious.

“I need to see the master of this house,” Xiao Ran says. “I’m his son.”

They started laughing. “What?”

“I said I’m his son,” he shouted in his high pitched voice of a child, “That man-he said he- This is-this is her body. He promised-he said-he said…” His voice babbled on in a cracking voice of an innocent child.

One of the guards looked uncomfortable after seeing the amount of pain his small body is holding, He muttered, “Should we call-?”

"What's the reason of this commotion?" Xiao Ran looked behind to see the nobleman himself. The man he had only pictured in his head, The man who didn't look at him like a father should look at his son. His expression blank and confused when his gaze fell on Xiao Ran - until he saw the cart.

Recognition. Then horror. Then fury.

“You- you dare bring this here?” he asked, voice thick with disgust. “The stench will seep inside the house.”

Xiao Ran yelled, "HOW COULD YOU SAY THAT! YOU TOLD HER YOU LOVED HER”.

“You mongrel think a whore will have a place in my heart? In my house, In this society?,” The nobleman spat. “You think this will get you a place in my family?”

Xiao Ran shook in fury. Insult towards his mother scalding his skin like hot oil. “I don’t want that. I dont want to be here. I just want to give her a proper funeral." His voice cracked. “I just need… enough for a burial. That’s all. Then i will go."

The nobleman’s lip curled farther. “A burial?” He laughed jeered. “You think I’d spend a single coin on this filth? Just drown her in the river. Her and yourself, both for all i care. Vermins.”

Xiao Ran didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say. This man was his father but Xiao Ran never had any right to demand him.

The man walked past Xiao Ran, already retreating inside the gates. “Get rid of him,” he said over his shoulder.

Two guards stepped forward. They looked at each other- then at the boy, no older than nine, his knees bleeding through threadbare pants. "Come on, boy,” one murmured. Not unkindly. Just firm. They took him by the arms, gently as they could manage and pushed him backward, away from the gate.

The doors closed slowly in front of him. But from the shills of the gates, Xiao Ran saw it. A boy. Same age as him. Same build. The nobleman walked to him, embraced him, called him “son” with softness.

Xiao Ran stood there, finally understood one thing. The first lesson of his life.

The rich lived by stepping on bones like stones, and the poor lived by becoming those.

That was the moment.

The spark.

The hate.

He took the cart. Turned and left.

The river didn’t care about his status. It flowed quietly, indifferently, shining silver under the light of dawn.

Xiao Ran chose a spot where the trees bowed low and dug with his bare hands. Soil clawed his nails and made his fingers bled but he didn’t stop. He dug until the hole was deep enough.

He kissed her forehead one last time. “I’ll come back every year,” he said.

Then he covered her in dirt.

It was done.

That night, he sat by the grave and watched the water move. The river still didn’t change. It didn't grieve.

How dare it, he thought. How dare the world go on?

He didn’t cry. He didn’t feel sad either. He was just empty.

Hunger struck like a knife the next morning. He’d gone three days without food. He could barely walk. Every bone ached with his every breath. He laid listless by his mother's grave and then he saw a maggot. It wriggled across a leaf and He was just too hungry to be disgusted.  He gathered a few more , made a fire, almost burned his hand trying to light it.

He whispered apologies to each one before he dropped into the fire. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m so hungry.”When he ate, it was the best thing he’d tasted in days. He even set some aside for his mother. He placed them on the grave gently, reverently.

He later learned how to chew without gagging. Every time he ate, he left a portion on the mound of earth. “Mother first,” he would whisper.

Days passed like this. It was hard to keep track. Morning bled into dusk, dusk into blackness. His world had narrowed into soil, sky, water and hunger.

More days go by. The wind turned colder. The river ran black and fast. Xiao Ran was weak and emaciated. He hadn’t had any energy to take a bath in days and sores bloomed on his skin like a fevered garden. His lips cracked. His purple eyes- those beautiful, almost unnatural eyes that his mother had once described as “gems” when she braided his hair-were now dull, rimmed with red.

He sat with his knees tucked beneath his chin, shivering. His cheeks burned. He was sick and he knew it. The chill had crept into his bones. When he coughed, it rattled like a pouch of broken glass inside him. One night, as the wind howled louder than wolves and rain broke open the sky.

And it didn’t wait. It slammed down like pellets . The brittle tree above him shuddered, doing its best to give him protection from the onslaught. But it was also at the mercy of the wind like Xiao Ran. Rain soaked through his clothes in moments. He curled against the roots, pressing his forehead to the earth, as if the ground might remember him, might warm him. Lightning cracked the sky. And for a moment, everything was silver.

He thought: This is it.

He wasn’t scared. He was just so tired. And, more than anything, he was lonely .

If he died here, at least he would be beside her. They would be buried together. He would never have to look for her in the afterlife. He’d find her right away, just reach out his hand and she’d be there.

That thought made him smile.

But then, a second later, the smile crumbled.

But - what if no one buried him ? What if animals came and picked his bones? What if the river rose and dragged his body away? What if his soul wandered and never found her?

The thought terrified him more than death and little Xiao Ran started to panic

Not loud. Not wild. Just quiet, steady dry heaving into the dirt. “Please,” he whispered, to no one. “I don’t want to die alone.”

Morning came like a cruel joke. His body had grown too lethargic to shiver. Everything felt grey. His ears picked up the soft twinkles of an anklet, same one that his mother wore and a gentler voice followed it.

“…my child?”

Warm hands.

“By the gods—”

And then, nothing.

When he opened his eyes again, the world was warm. Soft and Familiar.

He knew this ceiling, knew that crack in the wood. that sway of smoke of incense. His heart leapt. He was back home . Not the shack. But the brothel.

He blinked.

“Xiao Ran,” someone said softly.

He turned his head. It's been so long he has been called by his name. A woman sat beside the bed, brushing his hair back. Her face was worn from years of rouge and laughter, but her eyes were kind.

“Mei-Ayi…” he whispered.

She nodded, pupils trembling. Another voice came from the corner, high-pitched, frantic: “We were so worried, Xiao Ran ! We thought-we thought you-!”

“Shhh,” another courtesan whispered, wrapping her arms around the girl. "Where were you, ran'er. Jiejie knows how madam is. She could have just hidden behind the house until the man went away."

"We looked for you two for so long" The same high pitched voice sobbed again. "JieJie! Oh my jiejie."

Xiao Ran opened his mouth, then closed it.

A pause.

“Were you scared, A-Ran?” the woman beside him asked, her voice barely above a breath, hand steady on his head.

Xiao Ran blinked again. Was he scared? He kept blinking and then the dam broke.

He lunged forward, wrapped his arms around her waist and cried. He cried until his voice was hoarse, until he tasted blood in his throat, until his body shook, until his chest felt like it would break open and let out of all the pain he has been holding for this past two months .

He cried for his mother. For the tree. For the river. For the maggots he had eaten and the ones he had left on her grave.

The entire house fell silent.

From every corner, women came- rouged, robed, smelling faintly of familiar wine and jasmine. They didn’t speak. They knelt around him with tears in their eyes. One held his back, another stroked his hair. All trying to soak the sorrow away from him.

He knew he was no longer alone.

In the days that followed, Xiao Ran ran did not speak much. He helped clean dishes. He scrubbed floors. He swept ashes. He offered. He insisted.

“I’ll do anything,” he told the madam. “Just don’t send me away.”

The owner- Lady Jin- was a hard woman. She looked him up and down with narrowed eyes. “This is no place for a child.”

“I’m not a child,” he said, voice too pitched for what he was saying.

She turned away indifferent, resolute to her decision. But his aunties pleaded for him.

“He’s just a boy.”

“He’s ours.”

"He won’t survive anywhere else.”

Lady Jin sighed, pressing two fingers to her temple. “Fine. But he stays away from the front, away from the customer's eyes."

The entire court sighed in relief, Xiao Ran a little louder.

"And make sure he pulls his weight.” and she walked away as if she didn't age 30 years in the 30 days in worry over this little bug.

And Xiao Ran did.

He worked harder than anyone. He fetched water in the freezing cold, carried coal till his back ached. He washed dresses and fixed hems, cooked rice and fetched tea. His aunties told him to stop doing all these and focus on his studies, that madam told him to do chores only as a pretence. But Xiao Ran didn't stop and neither did he complained.

And at night, when the house grew quiet and the lanterns swayed gently in the dark, he would sneak to the window, stare at the stars, and whisper to his mother.

“I’m okay Don’t worry. I’ll come see you when I can.” He’d press his palm against the glass. Sometimes, if the moon was full, he could almost see her smile.

By the time he turned fifteen, Xiao Ran had become the soul of the house.

His eyes had light in them again. He had grown- tall and lithe. The baby fat had vanished from his face, leaving behind sculpted cheekbones and a proud chin. His hair, long and black, was always tied neatly in a bun, at the crown of his head. His lips were red without rouge. His skin kissed by bloom of sun and youth.

He was handsome. Some aunties would argue he was pretty. But more than that - he was happy and that made him all more beautiful. He danced with his aunties when they were tired. He mended slippers. He carried crying girls to bed when their hearts broke. He sang softly when he cooked. Every night, the house glowed warmer for him.

And for a time- he thought:

Maybe I can live like this forever.

But fate is never so kind on pure souls like xiao ran.

It began with a foreigner.

She walked into the brothel on a rainy evening, veiled, with foreign gold in her hands. Her accent was clipped and sharp.

She watched him for a while while he cleaned the table and laughed with a girl. Then she went to Lady Jin: “I want to buy him.”

Lady Jin’s face turned to stone. “We don’t sell boys. Definitely not of his age.”

The woman smiled. “Everyone has a price.”

“Not here,” Jin said.

And that should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t.

A week later, the lady returned at the middle of the night. This time, a stamped paper in her hands. Lady Jin could only read that with shaking hands.

Xiao Ran was in the garden when it happened.

He was planting sweet basil after finishing his lunch duties. He liked the smell of basil in his curry.

Soldiers came and grabbed him by the arms. He laughed at first. “What’s going on-hey, let go-”

No one answered. He saw the brothel girls watching from the windows. One was crying and another bit one her sleeve.

He twisted. Shouted. “Ayi! What’s happening?! Let me go!” Still no answer.

As they dragged him away, he saw Lady Jin standing by the door. She did not speak , did not move to stop them. Her stone grip stopping his Mei-ayi from reaching him.

He looked at her eyes and understood.

He had been sold.

The mansion was a gilded prison.

Wide corridors with cold marble floors that stung his feet. Rooms filled with furniture more expensive than any home he’d ever seen. every chair, every embroidered cushion, every vase filled with lilies- empty. Soulless. Just like him.

The first thing they gave him was silk.

A pale blue robe embroidered with gold-threaded clouds that shimmered faintly under lamplight. A sash like a noose, shoes that pinched, then perfume, then powder. Then the same command to smile.

He stood still in front of the mirror, a stranger in his own skin, his reflection waxen like porcelain. The foreign lady, called "Barroness" – her name never mattered – walked in circles around him, appraising, adjusting, patting the folds of his robe as if fluffing a cushion on a chair.

His fingers twitched at his sides. Beneath the stillness, something writhed. Every touch of her gloved hands felt like grime on his skin, like the skittering of insects he could not swat away.

She cooed, turned his chin with two fingers, smoothed his sleeve.

"Looking just like a doll"

And when his stomach growled from too many skipped meals, when his back ached from sitting too long with a straight spine, when his throat burned from thirst and he dared to whisper, “May I- ”

The back of a hand met his face.

“Pretty dolls don’t speak,” the lady had said, red lips curling.

“And you should eat less,” she had said once, tapping his cheek with her painted nail. “No boyish bulk. You are a doll. You have to look like one."

A doll . That was what he had became in this mansion.

The months passed in obedience. All days he was told to sit still in the audience room and he watched her jeweled hands flutter, her powdered face crease in amusement. She had so much and yet she fed on what little he had left. She never spoke to him directly. Only about him, as if he were deaf or dumb or merely wood carved into a boy’s shape. She never even asked his name. She referred to him as it , that boy , the doll .

Disgust pulsed in him, steady and restrained, the way oil waits before it boils. He wanted to spit. To wrench away. But he did nothing. He let her circle, Let her hum.

Mo Ran hated her. All of like her. All rich people who used their wealth and turned cruelty into etiquette. How they dressed their ugliness in lace and called it noble society.

They consider him as no human, only a bauble. Something to use or discard.

Worse began on a night of wine and hookah. The lady had thrown a banquet for foreign guests, men with pale hair and silver teeth. He had watched them from the gaps of the door. When the last guest left, he was allowed to get out of his room.

The lanterns burned low, she looked at him for a while from the other side of the room and then- “Come here, little doll .”He obeyed.

She pulled him into her bedchamber, drunk and laughing, the sweet stench of wine clinging to her robes. He knew something was wrong. Her laughter was too loud. Her grip too tight. She never had called him to her bedroom before.

Then she started touching him. Unlike before, her fingers wandered, curious and cruel, and when he jerked back out of instinct, her palm cracked across his face.

“Still,” she hissed, “Be a proper doll.”

He didn’t dare move again. She pushed him onto the bed. He landed like a rag, limbs splayed- no resistance, no dignity. Just soft fabric and a thudding heart. then she climbed on top of him.

He flinched when her fingers brushed too close to his throat. “What are you doing?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper, cracking at the edges like thawing ice.

But he should not have. It was the wrong move and he was punished very soon. Her hand came fast - a sharp, practiced backhand that snapped his head sideways.

“I said be a doll , ” she said coldly, as if correcting a misbehaving child and went back to untie his belts.

“I paid dearly for you, little doll . Let me take my money's worth." She reminded him, with breath stinking of hookah. And that phrase- that price - lodged itself into his throat like a shard of glass.

His cheek burned. But more than pain, it was the paralysis of his body that scared him more. As if the wooden screws of his joint had fallen, all at the same time.

Her weight pressed his lower body into the mattress.

A doll A doll A doll A doll A doll  A doll A doll A doll A doll A doll A doll A doll A doll  A doll A doll A doll A doll A doll A doll A doll A doll  A doll A doll A doll A doll  A doll A doll A doll A doll  A doll A doll A doll A doll  A doll A doll A doll A doll  A doll A doll A doll A doll  A doll A doll A doll A doll

He said nothing again, didn't even blink. Silent tears met his hair sideways. Eyes fixed on the corner where the wall met the ceiling, as if he could peel through plaster with his gaze and disappear.

That night, he learned how to separate his soul from his skin. How to make the body beneath her hands not his anymore. How to make it an object. A thing. A doll .

From that night onward, the nights no longer belonged to him.

Each evening, a knock.

Each night, the same command: Come to me.

And he would go. Mechanically.

He never cried. Not even once after that first night. He did everything she asked. Not because he wanted to. Not even because he feared, it's because that's what dolls do. They dance to the tugs of the strings. And the sooner it ended, the sooner he could take his metal key out from the keyhole on his back, curl into himself and evaporate.

When he slept, he no longer dreamed of how his courtesan aunties used to laugh. Because he could not remember their voices anymore or the way their bracelets clinked like windchimes.

The tree from his childhood - who accompanied him when he felt he really had noone left in this world, gently breathing like something alive, he couldn’t recall it anymore. He didn't remember how it looked or wondered whether it had ever whispered his name to the river.

Even his mother’s face, once the anchor of his life, had become a blur. A shape without edges. A memory without warmth.

But that was how it should be. That was what a doll was made for. Empty vessels.

A full year passed in that painted hell. Then, one morning, a strange carriage rolled into the estate.

It was not like the ones that came for parties or suitors. This one was darker. Sleeker. Lacquered wood and without any crestwork. He didn’t care. He watched from the garden while picking petals off a white lily.

Just after midday, a servant came. “Madam wants you,” the woman mumbled, gaze averted as always.

He stood up obediently and walked back into the house, inside her chamber and began to untie his robe quietly. The familiar pattern. The familiar hollowing out of his insides.

But she held up a hand. “No need for that,” she said. Her tone was curiously flat. “I’m no longer your owner.” He blinked. The words didn’t register at first. “Someone purchased you. You’re their's now.”

He had nothing to reply. He simply nodded. To him, it didn’t matter whether it was her hands or someone else’s - what did it change? A body sold was a body owned.

She gestured toward the door. “Pack your things. Wait by the gate.” He rose without a word and the door clicked shut behind him.

Moments later, from within the room, came the sound of crashing - glass shattering, a chair overturned, muffled shrieks and the thud of furniture being flung in rage.

He did not look back. What was there to see? She was not his master anymore. Let her scream. Let the whole house burn.

He waited by the gate for his new owner. He stood by the gate with the same doll-like stillness, a small satchel in his hand that contained the clothes he was wearing on the day he was picked up from the brothel. His only possession of life.

The summer air was thick with heat. He looked up at the sun and wondered if the next master would prefer him pale or tanned.

When the black carriage rolled back around, he stepped towards it. But before he could reach it, someone stepped out. A man in a butler’s coat, eyes veiled by a wide hat, said nothing, simply handed him a letter, turned, and disappeared into the carriage. The door shut. The wheels turned. The carriage rolled away.

He looked down on the pale envelope in his hand. When he opened it, a single haitang flower fell out- a little faded but still fragrant. He unfolded the paper.

You bear the resemblance  of the willow tree in my garden- slender yet unyielding, bending without breaking.

I hope this freedom is a gift of your liking. May you be reborn like my willow does each spring, shredding what has withered.

Perhaps one day, we will meet again after you have taken roots in the soil of your choosing, in the world you have built with your own hands.

And when that day comes, I will see in your eyes the truth I believe in now.

 

For now live on, little Willow.

 

He saw the blank inks on paper but the words were almost incomprehensible to him. The words blurred behind his eyes.

… Freedom?

........Reborn?

Thud

So loud it startled him, like a forgotten song suddenly remembered.

It had been so long since he’d felt his own heartbeat.

Thud thud thud thud.

He looked down at his hands. To his surprise, he didn’t see carved joints or painted wood that he was used to seeing in the mirror all the time.

He saw flesh.

Veins.

Fingers.

Bruised and trembling.

But his.

Free?

No more of keys winding him everynight? No more of hands pulling his strings? No more.

Free.

A laugh caught in his throat - small, wet, ridiculous. But it came anyway.

The wind on his face felt different now, not like punishment, but proof. He was real.

He was alive. he was free. he was reborn.

He lifted his head and saw the carriage-small.

No no. It was leaving. It was leaving him but he had yet to thank his saviour.

One step

Two steps

Three steps

Then a full sprint.

Xiao Ran began to run after the carriage, barefoot, breath burning. “WAIT!” he shouted, voice hoarse from prolonged unuse. “STOP!” The wind tore the word from his mouth. His legs was shaking. But the carriage didn’t stop. Its wheels spun indifferently and steadily onward. “PLEASE!” he cried, breath hitching. He ran faster.

He yet had to put a face to the letter.

He yet had to see the person who’d given him back his life, given him a name, given him a meaning

He yet had to ask the person why. Why not bind and chain or discard him like others but instead lift?

Xiao Ran needed them to know- whoever they were- that he would never forget.

That he would never let this act of mercy vanish unmarked into memory.

He had to tell the person who saved him that Xiao Ran would lay down his life if they ever asked him to. And he meant it - not as vow, but as instinct. As truth written into bone.

He had to say thank you. Properly. Out loud.

But then his toe caught on a stone. He fell hard. Face-first into the road, arms scraping raw, mouth filling with dust. His rib ached with the impact but he still staggered, scraped palms trembling and pushed himself upright. He sat in the dust, panting, shoulders shaking. Hopelessness bloom in his heart to see the carriage not stopping.

Loud and clear, Xiao Ran screamed toward the carriage that's almost a dot being swallowed by the road.

“I will become something! And then I will find you, my saviour. Your willow swears to the freedom you gave him!”

the trees rustled in wind as his sole witnesses.

The next two years of Xiao Ran's life were marked by the dull monotone rhythm of labor. Each day folding into the next like the endless layers of dust that clung to his pores. He woke before dawn, muscles aching, his hands cracked and raw from hauling sacks of dirt and cement under the scorching sun.

The weight of his promise to his patron- that they never even got to hear- kept pressing on his chest, a constant pinch that sharpened with every grueling task. He had sworn he would be greater than this, that he would rise far beyond the mud and grime. Yet here he was, tethered to a life of drudgery, his dreams buried beneath stones and sweat.

Each morning, as the first light crept over the horizon, Xiao Ran's heart still whispered a silent vow. One day, you will become someone. You will find your Willow. But the bitter truth was that the days remained unchanged as the sun rolled up, uneventful as the horizon far away.

Xiao Ran was hefting a heavy sack of cement near the town square when something caught his eye- a buzzing crowd gathered around the new bulletin board. The murmurs of the townspeople were thick with tension, their voices low but urgent. Curiousity beckoned him to go closer.

As soon as he was a sight distance from the bulletin, Every vertebrae of his spine locked in its place.

There- staring back at him from the fresh paper- was his face .

For a moment, Xiao Ran just stared but couldn't fathom what was happening. His pulse thundered in his ears. A queer sensation flooded his nerves.

The first thought that sprang to his mind was her - that woman, the foreign lady, the mistress with the cold perfume and gloved hands. Was this her doing? Had she finally decided that she had waited enough and wanted to reclaim her little doll back?

His fists clenched instinctively.

But then, as his mind started shifting gears, the fog in his brain started dissipating and slowly through the rustling and shuffling of townspeople, he caught a string of words spoken aloud by an old man behind him.

“…poster from the Duke of the West… says missing two years now… offering reward…”

Xiao Ran looks back on the paper to read this time. Properly read it .

The poster really had the ducal emblem sealed on the corner.

The name says Mo Weiyu , not Xiao Ran .

So it's not from her . Not that woman. I am Safe.

It was from The Duke .

He moved his eyes back at the ghost with his face. The image staring back at him was a mirror- same sharp eyes, the same determined set of the jaw but it was....clean. Untouched by soot and soil. Unscarred by hardship. Untainted by survival.

The son of a Duke, missing for two years.

And he looked exactly like Xiao Ran.

But his swirling thoughts came to a pause when his colleague called for him. He had to turn away, back to the backbreaking work waiting for him.

But a seed had been planted, gnawing on his brain.

That evening, at the pub, the monotony of Xiao Ran's life was once again cracked by a sudden commotion. Two times in one day, that was a record in Xiao Ran's book

A foreman, a burly guy with a scar slicing his cheek was causing a havoc a few feets from where Xiao Ran was seated. All he heard was that when the bear looking guy returned from a brief absence, he found one of his prized tools to be "different". He didn't get any attention of anyone surrounding him until he suspected his coworker- thin and shifty eyed- to be the thief and searched his bag only to find the original, unique, carved knife inside. The crowd started forming when they saw the replace tool being a perfect replica. The forgery was so flawless that only the sharpest eye could tell. That petite man’s betrayal was met with angry shouts and punches from the bigger guy.

Xiao Ran watched from the sidelines, the chaos enclosing him like a storm and his mind spun with a dangerous thought: What if i too-

The missing son of the Duke of the West, vanished for two years, swallowed by silence and whispered rumors. The noble circles’ news was a foreign language to him anyway. Their glittering world was a cage he had no key to. Yet here it was, a fractured door standing ajar, offering an escape.

If he’s truly lost… then why not me?

Why shouldn’t he claim the space left behind? Why not weave a new identity out?

For years, Xiao Ran had carried sacks of dirt and cement, his back bent and spirit fraying under the weight of poverty and despair. But the promise he’d made to Willow- the vow to rise, to be someone greater- pricked him still.

If Xiao Ran could step into the son's role, every door would fling open before him. The power, the influence-

His rough hands trembled as the thought settled. That night, under a canopy of bruised dusk, Xiao Ran made his choice. No longer a nameless boy scraping for survival, he would step into the role fate- or fate’s absence- had carved for him.

It was a dangerous plan. One wrong step and it will be his head on the next.

The next morning, Xiao Ran approached the Duke’s estate with nothing but the threadbare clothes on his back and the smudged letter from Willow folded carefully in his pocket. The grand gates looming like a challenge. His palms were clammy, heart thundering in his chest like a war drum. Around him, servants bustled, their sharp eyes flicking toward this ragged stranger with suspicion. When he was finally granted an audience in the antechamber, the weight of gazes crushed him, Exchanged bewildered glances, whisperes of hushed tones. Xiao ran’s confidence wavered for a heartbeat. But he had already thrown himself into the gamble, he couldn't back out anymore.

After what seemed like ten minutes, the heavy door clicked open revealing a tall man. Draped in dark and sumptuous robes, eyes like cold steel and his face carved with years of quiet power and command. It was the Duke of West.

Xiao Ran swallowed audibly under the Duke's silent pinning gaze. He took a deep breath and threw himself into the role he had rehearsed a thousand times in his mind. It was do or die situation, literally and figuratively.

“Father!” His voice cracked with a mixture of disuse and desperation. Without waiting, he stepped forward and pulled the duke into a fierce embrace. Xiao Ran clung on, whispering with trembling lips, “I’m back. I’m home.”

Xiao Ran expected some flicker of recognition, some warmth. Yet the Duke’s body was rigid, unyielding- no reciprocation. Xiao Ran forced a smile, masking the sting. Shock, he told himself, the man was probably just shocked.

“I… I was attacked from behind,” Xiao Ran started talking nonetheless, voice steady despite the tremor inside. “When I woke, I was somewhere unknown. I escaped somehow but couldn’t remember my way back. everything was gone from my mind. I didn’t even know who I was.." Xiao Ran crafted this story to cover his ignorance: an attack, a lost memory, a desperate escape. He thought The duke couldn't find a hole in his memory if the entire slate was presented blank, wiped clean.

"Until I saw the poster in the town square. It brought me back to you. Father, I am home.”

The Duke still said nothing. His gaze pierced Xiao Ran as if weighing his soul, pealing the later's skin until the hidden secret sprung free. Seconds kept stretching into an eternity.

Then, the cold tension was broken by loud footsteps, which brought a sharp, mocking laughter with it.

Xiao Ran looked behind the duke towards the source of the sound. It was a boy, younger than him, tall but shorter than him and leanier too. Mo Weishi, Duke's youngest son.

Xiao Ran forced a smile, stepping forward, “Brother, how have you been?”

Mo weishi’s eyes glimmered with cruel amusement while his lips were twisted into a sneer. His expression shifted like a serpent shedding its skin. “Brother?” he singsong-ed, voice soaked in mockery. Two steps forward, slow and deliberate, echoed against the marble floor like a blade unsheathing. “You dare call me that?”

Xiao Ran's spine stiffened, instinct whispering danger. The chandlier flickered, catching the sharp line of the younger son’s jaw, the cruel glint behind his lashes- no warmth there. Just delight at the impending unraveling.

“My brother is dead." the younger son said, tone dropping to a whisper, thick with venom.

Xiao Ran's chest went tight, breath caught like a thread yanked too hard. “What do you mean? I am right here?" His voice came out trembling with a confusion he could no longer hide.

"Still pretending?" He came close, Xiao Ran could feel the warmth of his breathe , the ash of cigar in his exhales. “My brother had died right here. In this house. Gasped like a fish before the light left his eyes. In. front. of. everyone".

Weishi nudged on Xiao Ran's chest with each word. Then he began circling him like a hawk studying a mouse that had wandered too far from safety. His shadow stretched long behind him. He leaned closer to Xiao Ran's face. Cruel eyes meets coward ones, voice almost a whisper now.

“You could have at least shed a few tears to nail the performance. Did they not teach you to act properly from wherever you crawled out off? Was it a slum? ...Or some back-alley brothel? Do you get any customers with this acting? Or were you just too cheap to bother?”

"Enough, Weishi." Duke's voice bounced off the walls of the room like a sledgehammer. "Where did you even learn such uncouth language?"

"But Father-" . "I said ENOUGH." His tone sharpened further. "Just when will you start acting like a Mo?"

Weishi swallowed the protest with clenched teeth and muttered an apology to the Duke and stepped away.

"Spare it. We’ll speak of this later. Perhaps it’s time we found you a stricter tutor."

Xiao Ran cowered away at the thunderous voice as if he was taking the one taking the brunt. Maybe he would be the next one too.

But the Duke, standing with weary finality, calmly looked at Xiao Ran, “Join us for lunch.” and walked away with the aura that had been pressing on his shoulders.

Huh!

Xiao Ran stood perplexed and upright.

Lunch?

Behind him came the same sharp scoff of the younger son. Mo Weishi, once again walked past him and with voice of menace, he says, "Don’t think about running. Father’s already increased the guard. You’re trapped, dog.”

Xiao Ran felt the cold grip of defeat. His knees trembled.

“But… why?” he whispered, voice cracking. “Then why was the poster still there?”

Mo Weishi glanced over his shoulder, lips curled into a smirk.

“You’ll find out,” he said. “At lunch.”

Guards stood quietly at the edge of the room now- more than before. Their scrutinising eyes lingered on Xiao Ran

Xiao Ran quickly realised, he was not a guest at the lunch.

He was the feast.

The long hours of the morning glory or not slipped by in a dull haze until a summon came. Xiao Ran was called to the dining room. His fate would be decided in a few minuted which made his clammed hands sweat harder. Having left no choice, He obliged. He quiety entered in to a view of a long mahogany table stretching down the hall, lined with high-backed chairs. Sunlight poured in through tall windows, casting golden patterns over glazed pheasants, polished fruits, delicate pastries and other cuisines that Xiao Ran didn't even know the name of. He finally looked around which he couldn't do since the morning with the haze clouding his brain. Every inch of the room spoke of old wealth. He stood at the edge, feeling out of place, knowing he is the dirtiest amongst all these.

There one of the chairs was occupied by the Duke and beside him was a woman. Pale, frilly, motionless, statuesqque. She sat as if carved from marble in this position, as if she has no connection with the world. Her eyes were glassy that betrayed all human emotion.

The Duke was looking at her eyes with an unrecognisable expression oozing out from his own. But when Xiao Ran's presence was announced, he finally looked at the boy,

A mechanical smile graced his face which Xiao Ran had not expected once in all of the calculations he made in the past few hours.

"Ah A-yu! Here you are! Come join us", The Duke said with the smile.

The 'A-yu' made Xiao Ran stumble and wince visibly. He opened his mouth, ready to apologise and plead for mercy.

Xiao Ran couldn't die here. No. Not yet.

But before words could form, the woman's voice came, soft and desperete:

"A-yu? A-Yu! Is that you? Is it really you?"

She hastly stood up from her chair making it fall behind with a thud. Spooked Xiao Ran took a step back but before he could take another, The woman ran to him and clutched him tightly in a shaking embrace. Incoherent babblings reached his ears, weaving the tangle of confusion tighter in his head.

What's happening? Why is she hugging me like i am her son when they all know their son is dead?

Xiao Ran stared to feel squirmy when a gruff voice cut through. "A-Qian! Let A-Yu eat first."

Calmly, gently, reassuringly the Duke pulled her away by the shoulder. "Be a dear. He must be hungry too. Come! Let's eat together. Then you also have to take your medicines."

The woman looked iffed after getting separated from Xiao Ran. Her fingers kept twitching as if trying to reach him back again. She kept refusing to settle down no matter how much the Duke tried to pacify.

Xiao Ran, still caught in the strange moment finally noticed the Duke's stare on his face. As someone who had always been good at reading clues, he immediately sprang into action.

"Yes..I am famished. Come let's eat, m-mom."

The smoke over woman's eyes finally cleared leaving a shining tearful pupils behind. She opened her hands and caressed Xiao Ran's face with a dainty smile and then held him close one more time. Xiao Ran's throat clogged up at the sight of the smile but he pretended it was because of the word he had used on the woman who was not his mother.

She smells like lavender.

Then the woman finally let go and took one step, then two steps, slowly reached to her previous seat and sat down. She glanced back at Xiao Ran with a wider smile and said,

"Come A-Yu! Sit beside mother."

Another wave of something roared inside Xiao Ran's heart. The motherless boy had to admit exactly what it was. It was longing . As if in a trance of a calling, Xiao Ran also reached back out and took a seat beside her. The woman's eyes never left him while he was walking towards her. She only started eating when Xiao Ran picked up his own cutlery and nibbled on whatever was put on her plate by the Duke and sometimes hesitantly by Xiao Ran's. The woman also returned the gesture and kept piling Xiao Ran's plate which would have been enjoyed by Xiao Ran very heartiously if not for the big boulder settling deeper inside his stomach.

Eventually the Duke called for the maids to take her away. Though she whined softly to stay with Xiao Ran, but with only after promise from him that he would come to visit her later, she could be taken to her chamber to take medicine and rest.

Xiao Ran remained seated, unsure of what to do or what his fate held. The Duke turned to him when the door clicked shut and the footstep sounds were muffled into a mute. "My wife's mind is fractured. Since our son's death," Xiao Ran straightened up unconciously but the Duke only glanced and contined, "She has refused to move forward. She's trapped in a moment."

"It's why....You have to stay here, by her side as a replacement of our son.... At least until she recovers."

Relief swept through Xiao Ran like warmth returning to frozen lake.

He knew it was a cruel plan not only to the woman but to the Duke too. He noticed the sighs that left Duke's lips. those were burdened with guilt. But Xiao Ran had come too far too feel any sympathy for them. The moment he chose to proceed with the plan last week, Xiao Ran knew he was no less cruel himself.

"What do i get out of this?" Xiao Ran looked the Duke dead in the eyes.

The Duke leaned forward slightly like a sword that's being bent. "what do you do want?"

Xiao Ran didnt hesitate. "Announce me as your adopted son.."

The Duke slowly stood up from his seat, hands finding a place inside his pockets, his expression twisted into something between amusement and calculation. "Do you think you are in the position to negotiate? What you tried to do was a crime. Impersonating a noble heir, that's high treason. We could kill you and noone would oppose."

The room tensed once more. For a brief moment, Xiao Ran had forgotten the kind of man he was dealing with- a Duke who wove intricate web of lies for 2 years to trap a sacrifice. The Duke simply stared at him for a moment, then let out a long, quiet sigh. He turned and paced slowly toward the end of the room.

Just when Xiao Ran’s last shred of hope began to fade, the Duke halted mid-step.

His voice, when it came was quiet but no less powerful. “But let me think about it for a while. The relationship between us,” he said, “is as unstable as it can be. We’ll return to this matter later. But I give you my word- you will be compensated generously, one way or another.”

Xiao Ran gave a small nod, but remembering the Duke’s back was to him, he lowly hummed in response.

What choice did he have anyway? Waiting, he decided, was still better than dying.

And yet, as the Duke’s footsteps also faded, one truth pressed heavy against his ribs: he was, once again, at the mercy of a noble.

Just like that without ceremony or certainty, Xiao Ran's new life began as Mo Weiyu- ressurected, unwelcomed and walking on a tightrope built from someone else’s bones.

The Duke never made the announcement afterwards. Not to the papers, not to the court, not even to the servants beyond who were necessary. To the outside world, he was still a no one. To the inside, just a quiet figure shadowing the Duchess’s recovery, a nameless caretaker housed in the servant's halls. Weiyu had agreed to this care taking duty on terms. And those terms were being ignored. So he was frustrated and resentful.

But Weiyu never let it affect his duties, he performed his role with meticulous diligence- never careless, never lacking in devotion and perhaps sometimes with real emotions. Each time he adjusted her shawl, coaxed her to eat or read her the same story for the third time in a day, he felt it swell in his chest: tight and burning. But he drenched it with water everytime. And under his care, the duchess began to change. Slowly at first- she started humming again, to recognize the smell of her favorite soup, to call “A-Yu” in a voice less broken and more real. Her eyes seemed to clear, her laughter returned in brief, delicate bursts.

The doctor was the first to say it. “The rest of her healing,” he told the Duke in a hushed private conversation, “needs to happen elsewhere. She is getting to dependent on the boy. It would be better if she is distanced now."  the Duke agreed to it willfully. Her dependence on Weiyu was glaringly obvious to anyone. So the arrangements were made as soon as possible. The Duchess clung to Weiyu with tearful reluctance until the carriage left with her.

Weiyu stayed behind because he was not dismissed. He remained in the estate like a tool tucked in a drawer- unused, but not discarded.

The Duke never explained why. But Weiyu understood. He was a contingency. A placeholder. A shadow of the real thing, in case her recovery faltered and the illusion needed to be conjured again.

A just in case.

Once the absence of Duchess settled in everyone's mind, everything changed, at least for Weiyu. The house which had once tolerated Weiyu for the sake of her recovery, swiftly turned cold and cruel.

It began subtly with curt dismissals from other servants who once smiled politely at him. Blank looks when he asked for clean linens, mocking laughter if he lingered too long in a sunlit corridor.

Then came the attacks. From Mo Weishi specifically.

He would catch Weiyu alone and strike where no one could see. A knee to the ribs in the hallway, a kick to the shin just before dinner, a shove down the stairs that left bruises blooming like ink beneath his sleeves.

“You think you are something now? After hogging all her attention,” Mo Weishi snarled, grabbing Weiyu by the collar and slamming him against the wall. “Just when my brother was finally out of the picture, you came in.”

His voice cracked- not with pity, but fury. “Why do I always have to come last?”

PUNCH. Fist to the face.

“ Why?! ”

Kick. Right into Weiyu’s stomach, folding him like paper.

His voice, slick with contempt. “And look! She's not here to care for her fake son either.”

Weishi made a game of starving him too. Issuing strict orders to the kitchen: “No food for the him. Let the dog learn hunger.”

It became a regular occurrence for Weiyu to go to bed light-headed and shivering, only to wake to cold dirty water and the ache of wounds that never had time to heal.

And the Duke? He never stepped in. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he did. But either way, he said nothing. Did nothing.

Just the same way he did nothing when his syphilis ridden son was on the death bed and he chose to silently let his offspring die and buried him unnamed.

All this to save the family's reputation? Weiyu thought to himself when he had first heard about the story from the gossiping servants through the paper thin walls of his room.

In this house, Weiyu learned something new and another vital: The Rich would eat their own too.

The daily beatings, though brutal, became the fuel Weiyu needed to keep the fire burning in his chest. Every blow from Mo Weishi, every insult spat with venom, reminded him- this is not your end.

This was not the life his patron had imagined for him. So he endured for an opportunity.

He swallowed blood with dignity, grit his teeth through broken ribs and stood when everyone wanted him to crawl. Because deep in the recess of his small, hidden chest, beneath a loose floorboard in the servants’ quarters, lay the only thing that mattered-

A letter, worn at the edges and a haitang flower, now dried and pressed flat as a sigh.

Weiyu would sit alone, hands trembling from pain and smooth the brittle page between his fingers. He would trace the strokes of the script, lips moving silently with each word.

He’d caress the flower as if it still carried fragnance, as if some part of them still lingered in its faded petals.

“What’s this?”

Before Weiyu could move, Weishi snatched the letter from his hands in one swift motion.

“No——!” Weiyu lunged forward, eyes wild. “Give it back!”

But the young master only stepped back with an amused smirk, waving a hand to summon two nearby guards. “Pin him down,” he ordered, like tossing a bone to hounds.

The soldiers obeyed without hesitation, grabbing Weiyu by the arms and forcing him to the floor.

“No! let me go!” he snarled, thrashing, kicking. “Don’t touch that! That’s mine!”

Weishi unfolded the letter with theatrical care, glancing through it before his face broke into a delighted, poisonous grin.

“Well, well,” he said, tone dripping venom. “Freedom? ........You were a slave ?”

He laughed, loud and sharp, echoing off the marble walls. “This idiot actually used to be someone’s property .” He mimicked the letter’s gentle tone in a mock falsetto.

Then, with a cruel laugh: “What kind of fool wastes coin and ink on a mongrel like you?”

Weiyu howled beneath the guards’ grip, thrashing like a wild animal. “Give it back!"

Weishi dangled the letter between two fingers, walking slowly forward. “Why should I? When I could tear this. Right now. End of story.”

Weiyu froze. His breathing hitched, raw and frantic. “No,” he whispered, chest heaving. “No- please.” His voice broke as he lowered his head. “I’ll do anything… Please. Don’t ruin it. I’ll listen. Just..don’t do anything to the letter.” His eyes were locked on the letter- his last tether, the last warmth left to him in this cold life.

Weishi tilted his head, smile curling like smoke. “Anything?” he echoed, voice mockingly gentle.

Then he tucked the letter into the inner fold of his silk robe, the edges still visible, like bait. “Then I’ll hold on to this for now. Until I decide what I want you to do.”

And just like that, the leash on Weiyu's neck tightened.

The next evening, the manor bloomed with cruel laughter. Weiyu was scrubbing the outer courtyard tiles third time since morning as his self inflicted punishment for losing the letter, when he heard the horses- six of them, sleek and fine, hooves cracking over stone like applause. The young master’s friends. Offspring of other nobles, lacquered in silks and easy confidence, voices loud with idle power.

A few moments later Weishi approached Weiyu with his razon thin smile. “I’ve decided,” he announced. “I know what I want from you.”

Weiyu didn't react, neither he moved from his position. But Weishi had his full attention. Weishi knew that too. So he just lazily waved his hands to the servant beside him. The servant came forward with a bundle of a muzzle: black and buckled, Dog ears: cheaply made, A collar: attached to a leash. “Wear them and come out on all fours. Our guests would like to be entertained.”

Weiyu couldn't agree or deny and Weishi didn't give him a moment to do so, he leaned forward and said lowly. “Or would you like me to bring out that letter again? Perhaps I should tear it here actually- piece by piece and feed it to those koi.”

Weiyu's knees buckled. It was the thought of that letter. The faded ink. Willow’s name. The haitang flower pressed inside. If he lost that, then there would be nothing left of himself. So he nodded. Slowly. Shamefully.

It took less than thirty minutes for Weiyu to get ready. Not once did he glance at the mirror in his room. He couldn’t. The thought of seeing himsel- seeing that version of himself- he wanted to spare himself that memory at least. A small mercy.

When Weiyu entered the hall in all fours like Weishi wanted, The reaction was immediate. Laughter erupted like thunder.

The leather muzzle was stiff on his face. The leash dragged behind him like a punishment. The ears felt hot against his scalp. He crawled into the room, spine curled, eyes to the floor.

Weiyu stopped when he neared the low table where drinks and fruit had been laid. The other boys- no older than Mo Ran himself, yet already brimming with inherited menace- lounged in velvet chairs, eyes glittering with mock interest.

“Oh gods,” one of the boys wheezing. “Look at him! Does he know how to bark?”

“Maybe he’s mute,” another one slurred. “Or shy. What's its name?"

Weishi smirked and lifted the end of Weiyu’s leash and gave it a little tug, amused by the slight shameful jolt it sent through Weiyu’s crawling frame.

“Mo Weiyu,” he said.

A pause. Then a furrowed brow from one of the guests. “Wasn’t that your brother’s name?”

“Mm.” Weishi clicked his tongue, smiling. “My brother died like a dog. So Father got Mother another dog with the same name to replace him.”

The table roared with laughter again. Weiyu only flinched. He felt the words more than he heard them- like knives pressed through butter.

“Come here, A-Yu,” one of them cooed mockingly, patting the cushion by his chair. “Good boy, come!”

The leash was passed around all night like a baton, a toy at a banquet. Most of the young lords took turns tugging it- sometimes sharply to hear the choked gasp Weiyu couldn’t suppress. Other times, they would stroke his hair mockingly, call him pretty, call him loyal, call him obedient.

He never once raised his eyes to let them see the sheen of tear glimmering on his lashline.

After sometime,  he, on the ground, in leather and shame, didn’t even flinch anymore when someone kicked him lightly in the side or gave his rope a tug.

When the guests were drunk on wine and some unknown substance, reclining lazily on silk cushions, still laughing over old jokes, The young master yawned and waved a dismissive hand at the boy on the floor. “You may go now,” he said, like dismissing a dog after a trick. “Crawl back to your kennel.”

Weiyu's knees ached and the collar burned- but he stood straight. His height towering everyone in the room. His voice, hoarse but steady: “Now give me my letter.”

The room quieted, if only for a moment. Weishi turned his head with a mocking tilt. “What did you say?”

“You promised,” Weiyu said, taking a single step forward. “You said you’d give it back after you got what you wanted. Now give it to me.”

A flicker of disbelief crossed the young master’s face, then amusement, then rage.

“You dare to talk to me in that tone?” he hissed, voice low and sharp. “After tonight? You think you have the face to demand anything?”

But then a hand landed on Weishi’s shoulder. The young noble beside him leaned in and whispered something into his ear. Whatever it was, it lit a cruel shimmer in Weishi’s eyes.

Then he stood up lazily, brushing the front of his shirt as though nothing had happened. Weiyu didn’t move, eyes fixed on the letter still in Weishi’s grip. The younger boy raised it high, taunting, the paper fluttering slightly in the air. “Fine,” Weishi said, voice syrup thick with amusement. “Take it then.”

Weiyu hadn't needed to be told twice. He lunged. But before his fingers could grasp it, Weishi smirked and tossed it over his shoulder.

The letter fluttered through the air like a dying moth. A burst of chuckle followed. One of the young masters caught it mid-fall and held it up gleefully.

“Come on then, mutt!” the boy shouted. “Want it so bad? Come fetch!”

Weiyu dashed after him, anger and fear coiling in his gut. But just as he reached the boy, the letter was flicked away again- to another hand, another face.

A chase began.

It was a child’s game, cruel and careless game. A room full of young men in velvet and arrogance, tossing around the only thing Weiyu had left to live for. With every pass, the letter crinkled a bit more and an old worn paper like that would soon give out.

His heart pounded in his ears. He didn’t care if they laughed. Didn’t care if they kicked. He only cared how to get that letter back to safety.

The laughter grew louder, more vicious every time he missed. His hands grasped air again and again.

Then-

The letter landed on the arm of a boy leaning against the far wall. The boy who had not joined them the entire evening. Just stayed in his corner, looking and listening. He caught it with ease and glanced down at the fragile, worn paper, then at Weiyu's panting, wild eyes and trembling hands.

“Here! Your highness” One of the others called out. “Throw it! Let’s see how long the beast can keep running!”

But the boy did not move. He looked at the crumpled corner of the parchment and the smeared ink. He handed out the letter carefully back to Weiyu with gentle fingers. He said in a voice holding no pity, no scron, just even. “Childish.”

For the first time that night, Weiyu dared to look at a person.

Your highness? so He is the prince.

And he was- beautiful.

Not the polished, perfumed beauty of court dandies. No. This one was carved in shadows and pale winter light, sword-sharp eyebrows drawn together with intimate interest. His expression was unreadable, lips pressed in a firm unamused line. But something about him- something in the stillness, in the way he handled the fragile letter as though it were breakable and not soiled- struck Mo Ran deep in the chest.

Those eyes. They were not kind. But they weren’t cruel, either. They held a softness carefully hidden, like a blade wrapped in silk.

For a heartbeat, Weiyu forgot the collar at his throat. Forgot the shame crusted on his skin. Forgot the leash that trailed behind him like a tail.

Just for a moment.

But after the man handed the letter back with the disinterest of a prince tossing alms, He waved a hand dismissively around his nose, frowning faintly. “You smell like dog,” he said flatly. “Go away.”

Weiyu froze. The words struck like a bowstring snapped on his face.

Whatever fragile gratitude had been blooming in his chest shriveled into ash.

Without a word, Weiyu took the letter, bowed his head again, and walked away.

The leash still swayed behind him.

He pushed open the side door to the guest wing, slipped into the dim hallway toward his quarters, each step still shackled with the weight of what had just happened. But as he turned the corner, a movement caught his eye.

A figure ahead- already halfway down the corridor, the pale trim of their white cloak catching the wind.

It was him. The prince.

The man who had stopped the game. The one who had handed back the letter without comment. The one who had told him to go away like some stray mutt.

He was leaving. Just like that. Cloak swinging. Boots clicking sharp and clean against the stones. Not a single backward glance. Not even a proper goodbye to the host.

He must have truly been bored, Weiyu thought bitterly. So bored that even the cruelty failed to entertain him.

Weiyu reached his quarters. The air was thick with the staleness of silence. Not even the wind dared slip through the cracks. His throat burned with unspoken curses. His chest ached with something colder than pain- emptiness, maybe. Or humiliation carved so deep it had begun to fester.

He shut the door behind him and collapsed onto the thin mat with the letter still clutched tight in his fist. The candle flickered.

He unfolded it carefully like peeling charred skin. The delicate creases that once felt like careful preservation now gaped like old wounds. Tiny tears had formed in the corners. Each one felt like a gash on his heart. He traced them with shaking fingers. Thumb-smudged, torn, ragged, unclean, sullied by laughter that didn’t belong.

Weiyu stared at it, numb. This letter wasn’t just paper. It wasn’t just words. It was all he had left of them. Of the only person who had ever looked at him and seen something humane. Of the only person who had reached into the filth of his world and left behind something gentle, without asking for anything in return.

And they had touched it.

They had touched them .

His breath felt like poison in his throat.

It wasn’t about him anymore. Not his pride, not his shame. They could call him dog, make him crawl, strip him bare. But they had dragged them into it. Dirtied something that was never meant for them.

And that- that -was unforgivable.

He traced one of the torn folds with his fingertip, his touch feather-light. As if he could smooth it back into shape. As if love was enough to undo damage. But it wasn’t.

The letter would never be the same. Neither would he.

They had broken something sacred.

The next noon dusked in gray mist, the kind that softened edges and made the world feel hushed, almost reverent. The villa was unusually still.

Then came the screaming. Servants running. Stable boys shouting. Horses rearing, their nostrils flared with the scent of blood on the wind. Weiyu didn’t move from his corner by the window. He sat still, watching.

“They’re dead,” someone gasped in the courtyard below. “The whole carriage! Gone off the cliff. Wheel snapped clean off.”

“The Young Master…?” a maid’s voice quivered.

“All of them. No survivors.”

The words echoed like church bells in Weiyu’s mind, deep and slow and final.

He didn’t rush to the scene. He didn’t need to. He had no performance to give, no grief to display.

Instead, he remained seated. One hand resting over the hidden floorboard that cradled the folded, battered letter. His thumb moved in slow circles, an absent-minded caress- like prayer.

But his hand was not clean enough for it. He looked down at them, pale in the afternoon sun. Slender unstained fingers and yet he imagined a smear of red between his nails. A silence that dripped like oil from his skin.

When he had seen the coachman crouched by the carriage this morning, he saw the lug nuts weren’t tightened properly. The angle was just slightly off- not catastrophic, not yet. But if the roads were rough, or the pace too quick, or someone just fractured one of the spokes just enough unnoticeable....…

Weiyu watched, standing in the chill of early morning and then sneaked away.

He actually felt no satisfaction after hearing the news- only the breathless stillness that came after the plunge, where one resurfaced and realize they were still alive.

He pressed his hand atop his chest. His heart beat traitorously fast. He felt relieved. But he also felt… guilty.

But the guilt wasn't enough to drown him, It curled in his stomach like smoke- uncomfortable, yes, but bearable.

When he finally did stand, it was not to mourn. He stepped outside and glanced toward the horizone, to the direction of the cliff where the carriage had tumbled- A breeze passed by, cool against his face. Weiyu closed his eyes. “Forgive me,” he whispered, not to the dead, but to the one who had trusted that he would be different.

He then simply walked back inside and began to sweep the floor of his chamber.

As if a curse had befallen on the Ducal house, another bad news soon hit them in the same week.

The Duchess had been found in her retreat, hanging by her silken sash from the beam above her bed. Her physician said her mind had unraveled like thin thread after the death of Weishi. There had been no hope.

Weiyu stared at the stone wall for a long time when the news reached him.

Was he sad? He supposed so.

Somewhere along the way, the fragile bond between them- as fabricated and parasitic as it was- had started to press at the empty ache inside him. A ghost of comfort.

But now she was gone. Her body, too delicate to withstand the weight of grief, had given up.

Xiao Ran just..... did not know what to feel.

He leaned back in his chair, eyes dry.

There was no letter this time. No flower. No goodbye.

Only absence. And the knowledge that she, too, had added another lock to the cage around his soul.

Xiao Ran folded his clothes with the precision of someone used to fleeing. No sentiment, no hesitation. The death of the duchess had snapped the last thread that tethered him to this house, that felt less like prison in her presence but never quite became his home.

So he picked up his bag and walked through the marbled corridor one last time.

He was nearly at the gate when the Duke’s voice rang behind him like a dropped blade.

“Where are you going?"

Xiao Ran looked back. The Duke looked as though he had aged twice over in the span of two weeks. His once imposing frame now stooped beneath invisible weight; the broad shoulders that used to square with command sagged like sagging drapery. His cheeks had hollowed, his eyes sunk into bruised crescents, ringed with grief and sleeplessness. The tremor in his hands portrayed the strain of performing two funerals back-to-back; his youngest son and then his wife. Even his voice, when it came, rasped like old parchment, as if his throat could no longer bear the burden of words.

Eyes wary, Xiao Ran said, "Now that she is gone, my duty is over and I’ll be on my way.”

The Duke stepped closer, brows drawn not in anger, but something soft. In authority cloaked voice he says, "But won't you take your payment?"

Mo Ran didn’t answer. His hands tightened around the bag’s strap.

The Duke’s voice lowered. “Didn't you want to be a Mo? So as legally adopted registered in the family records under my name and title, you have lot of more duties to be fulfilled."

Mo Ran froze. “Since when... i was adopted-?”

The Duke looked at him the way one would at a naive child. “Since your mother- my wife-recovered her senses and realized the truth.”

“She still wanted to make you her son.” The Duke continued gently, as if coaxing a frightened dog, as if this were kindness. “Even after knowing you were not our blood. She insisted on adoption.”

Mo Ran stared at him. A sharp painful twist in his gut. Mo Ran could not tell whether the pain in his chest was from confusion or rage.

She had looked at Xiao Ran with affection, but it had never been his name she called with love. Just the echo of another. Mo Weiyu.

So Xiao Ran secretly felt angry and petulant. As if he had any right to do so. But now that he found out she did gave him the right but never directly told him herself, Xiao Ran felt wrong. His felt his anger was unjustified. He felt.... betrayed.

“But why,” he said, “was i not told?” By you. By her.

The Duke’s lips curled into a tired, almost amused smile. “She wanted to tell you herself after getting better."

So she had wanted him. Not as a copy. Not as a name to soothe a wound. Not as a stand-in.

As Xiao Ran .

She would have called out his name gently and watched with those same love filled eyes he hadn’t been the recipient of in years. It would have been a kindness so rare in his life. And now it was gone. She was gone. Another closeness, lost to this world.

Was Xiao Ran cursed? Or was he the curse itself? Why did everything he touched crumbled, turned to ash, vanished in smoke?

And every time- without fail- it was a rich noble’s hand that struck the match, grinning as the world around Xiao Ran burned.

If Weishi and his companions hadn’t let their arrogance of their wealth, novelty and cruelty get the better of them, had they not mocked what Xiao Ran held dear, humiliated what little he had left, he might had warned them. He might had saved them. And the Duchess… she would still had been alive, sitting across from him, calling him A-Ran with that soft, broken smile.

But they hadn’t and now He was all alone again.

'Mo ran' his new name, announced by the Duke before the assembled nobles and declared in a voice steady as mountain, “From this day forth, let it be known that He is my rightful son and heir.” With that single proclamation, the human that had once belonged to a gutter became etched into the lineage of gilded and unerasable power.

For a long time, Mo Ran stood there at the center of a room full of people who once wouldn’t have spared him even a glance, let alone a handful of dust. And in his chest, something familiar began to bubble up again.

And so the path towards the dream had started to be built.

A slow, seething blaze. The kind of fire that had kept him alive all these years, curled in his chest- like a dragon spitting fire, not frantic but something wilder. Steadier. Like coal in a brazier, glowing red under the ash.

He might truly have been a dooming black hole who devoured everything he let come close to his heart. But his patron would not meet the same end. Mo Ran would never allow it. No god, no blue blood, no silent force of destiny would take his god from him.

And if that meant defying the stars themselves, he would.

If this kingdom- its lines, its rules, its hierarchy carved into bone, had to be replaced, then he would do it with his own hands. He would tear it down to its foundations, rip out its rot, starting from the head that ruled it. The royals.

The King lay dying on his throne, decaying quietly behind silk screens, his mind lost to fever and age. No one bowed to him anymore except out of habit. Power had already passed like a torch into the next outstretched hand. The Crown Prince.

So Mo Ran made him his target. And now, with ducal power in his name and the key to the kingdom’s very center in his grasp-Mo Ran had every opportunity to begin his hunt.

The prince, whose beauty and cruelty were legend. The prince, who ruled with a smile and silenced dissent with perfume-laced poison. The prince, whose face he had seen only once amd already learnt to hate even his shadows.

The same prince who is now standing before him-

Prince Wanning furrowed his brows after catching the confusion and something darker flickering across Mo Ran’s face. But his own expression went back to become apathic in a blink. “I don’t have all the time in the world,” he says, voice crisp as frost of snow. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Palace. Nine a.m. Over tea if your prefer."

And with that, he turns on his heel and leaves the balcony as gracefully he had arrived, only leaving the wafting fragnance of haitang in the air as a proof that he was here. The conversation was real and not Mo Ran's fever dream.

Mo Ran’s mind spins in a thousand directions. He doesn't know if he should walk into this game or turn away with a snare. Every instinct is screaming at him to leave it, not to play the Crown Prince's game.

But can he afford to?

His position in aristocratic society- albeit fragile as it was- has become the leverage holding up their movement. If his shameful past is ever exposed, the ridicule will be loud, but worse- the exile from the inner circles will be absolute. The arrogant nobles would never share air with a former slave.

Everything he’d built, every name and identity he has gone through, could unravel in a single breath.

His dignity- what little was left of it- is it worth more than the revolution he’d built from ash and blood? more than the thousands who followed him, who believes in a future with he had woven? More than his promise?

He stands haunched under the crushing weight of the cost of surviving once again.

The laughter and music of the party fades into a distant hum as he steps away, one hand trembling slightly against the inside of his sleeve. He gives a vague excuse to a passing servant, then turns down the quiet corridor behind the hall.

The path leads him out through the garden gates, down the shadowed streets, and finally to the only place left where he doesn't have to perform. The dingy old bar at the edge of the merchant quarter where it all started.

The bar is just far enough from noble eyes, yet close enough to listen , run by an old grizzled man with a scar across his cheeks, once a steward of the crown, now one of Mo Ran’s most trusted shadow.

A narrow staircase behind the ale barrels leads down into the gate of the true heart of their revolution. And then, the door opens to the crude but alive base.

Low stone ceilings arch above few round tables and chairs. Crates of contraband supplies sit neatly in corners: weapons, herbs and clothes dyed in the colors of revolution. A faint smell of iron and candle wax is clinging to the air.

One wall working as the blackboard and is lined with maps, coded markings and names pinned to places that pulsed like pressure points of the kingdom. Every inch of that room has purpose. Every brick has heard secrets.

Around them, more than two dozen of others fill the space; teachers, scholars, court scribes, low ranking military minds, entrepreneurs. All educated, all capable, but all also discarded.

They are the kingdom’s brightest minds, pushed aside time and time again whenever a noble’s son with a tenth of their intellect decided to apply for the same seat. It isn't just humiliation that drove them here. It was the unfairness. A quiet, burning need to take back the future that had been stolen from them, not just for themselves, but for the people still voiceless outside these walls. Here, They are the same: exiles, thinkers, fighters.

Above them, nobles drink themselves blind. But below, in this low-lit chamber, a new world is already being written.

When Mo Ran's presence is known, the room quietenes with tension. Xue Meng already crosses the distance between them, brows furrowed in worry. Shi Mei who was seated at the table, carefully reviewing a draft manifesto by lamplight, also stands up.

Xue Meng doesn't waste time. “So~” he draws. “Did Huaizui even give you the time of day?”

Mo Ran pulls off his gloves slowly, jaw tight. “We spoke.”

Shi Mei glances up, brows knitting. "Any hint he’s considering you… positively?”

Mo Ran lets out a empty breathless chuckle. "I was just sized up and then dismissed.”

Xue Meng sighs and leans back against the wall, arms crossed, curses under his breath and kicks at a loose stool. “Bastard.”

"Great. So basically, nothing we can use. someone mutters from the back.

“I didn’t say that,” Mo Ran says, his tone sharper now. “He saw me. That’s the first step."

The silence that follows isn't just disappointment, it is understanding. Every one of them in that room had been talked down to, shut out, made to feel lesser. Mo Ran is just the one walking closest to the fire. The risk of getting burnt at the start has already been expected.

The tension that had raised the shackles in their minds fizzles out just a little. One by one, the rebels turn away, murmuring their frustrations under breath. The sharp edge of expectation dulls into resignation.

But Shi Mei lingered. He approaches Mo Ran with gentle eyes that are far too perceptive. He steps forward and with a soft but certain voice he says, “There’s something more that happened, isn’t there?”

Mo Ran doesn't look at him at first. His jaw twitched. He had hoped no one noticed, no one felt it. He wants to think alone first, organise his messy thoughts. But of course Shi Mei did. He always does.

Mo Ran finally meets his gaze and then pans his vision to Xue Meng who straightened up after Shi Mei's low voice cut through him too, "Yes… There will be some changes in the plan."

The ale feels sharp, bitter in the throat.

Mo Ran leans forward in his chair, head lowered on the table in defeat, eyes half-lidded with exhaustion. Across the table, Xue Meng and Shi Mei drinks more slowly, cautiously, like men waiting for the next fire to start.

It is Mo Ran who lights it. He says flatly, “The Crown Prince wants to sleep with me.”

Shi Mei chokes mid-sip. “ What? ”

Xue Meng blinks hard. “ You’re kidding. ”

“Why would i joke like that,” Mo Ran says, eyes amused but voice dry. “He said it. Or rather, he… proposed it , to say mildly."

"So he threatened you." Shi Mei interjects.

"Yeah." Mo Ran breathes out.

Xue Meng stares at him, incredulous. “What threat?”

Mo Ran shrugs, “We had crossed paths once. Things happened. in the Ducal palace, before I ever met you two."

Xue Meng leans forward, elbows on the table, He sighes, “You’re not ready to tell us what he said, are you?”

Mo Ran didn’t answer right away- fingers tightening around the rim. He could never retell that shameful night with his mouth.

Xue Meng hummed under his breath. The silence was enough for an answer. “Okay fine. So you can't just.....ignore the proposal?"

But Mo Ran shakes his head. “It’s not that simple. I have to do it."

Swirling what little was left in his cup, he says in a distant voice, “My courtesan aunties used to say- the loosest mouths come after the body’s been satisfied. People admits all kinds of things in bed when they think you’re nothing but skin.” He looks at them raising one brow mischievously, "I should test that theory? What do you say? I shall get the Prince to confess a lot of inner royal secrets." and then gave a humorless hollow laugh before downing the remaining liquid in the cup.

Xue Meng looks unconvinced. “And what about you ?”

Shi Mei’s voice is gentler. “You don’t want to do this, A-Ran. We know.”

They don't say the rest. That ever since Mo Ran became the Duke’s heir, he had mobilized scouts to search for the person he calls his saviour . He still asks for updates even when none comes. he still carries the letter. Still runs his fingers along its creases, hoping it hasn't faded too far to be real.

They knew he is waiting.

But yet Mo Ran gives them a smile that doesn't reach his eyes and pours another drink.

“It’s just a bed,” he says, quiet. “Just few nights.… I’ll survive it.”

Noone else said anything after that but all three were grieving the same.

From tomorrow morning, everything will go through an unpredictable change.

Chapter Text

The night passes in uneasy anticipation, unsleeped, just tossing and turning. And it was evident by the big dark circles on Mo Ran's reflection.

A deap and tired sigh escapes him like a confession slipping between cracks in a wall. It leaves him feeling exposed. He adjusts the tie again, though it doesn’t need adjusting. Just something to do with his hands.

There’s a knock. He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he draws in a breath, lifts his chin, and meets his reflection again. This time, he forces stillness into his gaze.

“Enter,” he says, which is followed by the soft creak of the door.

The butler steps inside, head bowed, voice low.

“The carriage is ready, My Lord.”

Mo Ran feels another sigh press against his throat. This one stays lodged there, heavy and unspoken.

He doesn’t look at the butler - just at the mirror, one last time. He doesn’t pause to second-guess it now. He simply walks forward.

“Hm. Let’s go,” he says.

Mo Ran arrives at the palace a few minutes ahead of the appointed time.

The carriage rolls to a stop at the edge of the northern gardens, and he steps down, unsure where to go. All he sees is the garden stretching wide before him, surrounding the northern wing like an overgrown moat. The prince’s chambers rest at the center - isolated, unreachable at a glance, like an island adrift in a sea of tangled green.

He hesitates, frowning at the pathless sprawl.

Just as he begins walk straight into a bush looking for a path to follow, a group of royal servants approach, bowing briefly before wordlessly gesturing to lead the way for him.

Mo Ran nods, then walks. His steps feel too loud, too heavy for a place this quiet. His eyes flick across the blooms and brush. "I never knew the palace had such an ....unique garden. "

One of the servants speaks as they move. “It was designed by His Highness, the Crown Prince last year.”

Then the Crown Prince has terrible taste.

The whole place looks like someone upended a basket of flower seeds and called it art. There’s no structure, no cooperation. Roses beside wild grass, lilies crushed between shrubs, vines curling up places they shouldn’t be.

But yet very strangely, the air doesn’t smell as harsh as he expects from an wild eyesore garden.

Despite the chaos, it carries a lightness. The scent is soft, not cloying. Clean. He doesn’t admit it to himself, but something about the mess of it all feels… deliberate.

He walks for another ten minutes before the path finally opens to the Crown Prince’s residence.

At the center of the courtyard sits a large stone fountain, its basin cracked in places and long emptied of water. A dragon coils at its heart, rearing upward with its mouth open in a silent roar.

Mo Ran glances at it briefly, then down at his watch. Twenty minutes past the appointed time. His jaw tightens. He bites his lower lip, annoyed, and picks up his pace.

He passes through the outer gate, but before he can enter the main hall, the servent who guided him here, steps forward and bows.

“His Highness is sleeping. You will be seated in the antechamber until he wakes.”

Mo Ran blinks, caught off guard.

A flicker of irritation rises in his chest. He had been invited- summoned, even. Shouldn’t guests be met with at least the courtesy of punctuality?

But then again… he’s late too. Twenty minutes late. If the prince had been prepared, Mo Ran would've been the disrespectful one.

So he swallows it. The sting of being made to wait. He offers a short nod and steps into the antechamber without complaint- not that he could make one even if he tried.

He sits down, his coat rustling softly against the cushions.

Through the open doorway, he can still see the dragon fountain in the courtyard. Without water in the basin, the statue looks out of place- majestic in design, but dulled by neglect.

It isn’t even seven minutes before a servant returns, bowing.

“His Highness will see you now.”

Mo Ran acknowledges the servant and stands up swiftly, brushing down his coat, and follows through a set of double doors.

He steps into the chamber and stops. The view that welcomed him was something he was never prepared for.

The Crown Prince- bare from the waist up, a white blanket draped casually over his lap. His long hair spilling down his shoulders and chest, the only veil between Mo Ran’s eyes and the long stretch of skin exposed beneath. It’s not black, not truly- darker than chestnut, but carrying a muted sheen, like charred Japanese wood. The strands fall straight and fine, tapering at the ends like a falcon’s tail, swaying gently with every subtle stir of the breeze.

Mo Ran’s eyes wander. From the slope of the collarbones, down the line of the sternum, to the narrow waist barely concealed beneath the fall of hair and linen.

Then he looks back up. To witness tje most unguarded the prince has ever looked in his presence- perhaps in anyone’s.

The frost that usually lives in his eyes is gone, replaced by something softer, glazed with sleep. His lashes are still heavy, his expression quiet, the edge of a yawn tugging faintly at the corners of his mouth.

Mo Ran doesn’t stop his thoughts from drifting.

He thinks, without irony, that the prince looks like a lazy cat basking under the morning sun.

Soft. Warm. Dangerous in ways that aren’t always sharp.

He doesn’t say anything yet- just stands there, The reverie gets broken with "Are you just going to gap like a fool by the door or come inside?"

Mo Ran feels heat rise to his face before he can stop it. He clears his throat softly, eyes darting away. “Didn’t mean to… interrupt anything,” he mumbles, voice lower than usual, "Excuse me then, Your Highness."

He walks in stiffly, hands tucked behind his back, and comes to a stop about a foot away from the bed.

Too close.

He shifts half a step back. Better.

He tries not to look at the Crown Prince’s bare chest again. Tries not to notice how the blanket dips too low on his waist.

Instead, he fixes his eyes on the nearest neutral spot- the carved headboard, or maybe the faint embroidery on the edge of the sheets.

Anywhere but there.

He stands silent, still. Unsure what to say next. Unsure if he should sit, or bow, or apologize again.

The prince still hasn’t spoken.

And in that moment, the silence stretches-

soft, intimate, and somehow heavier than words.

The prince shifts beneath the blanket, stretching slowly, the motion fluid but unhurried- still steeped in sleep. He rises without rush, hair slipping down his back like silk poured from a jar. The blanket falls away as he stands, revealing more of his frame before he reaches for a shirt draped over a nearby chair by a servent.

Mo Ran had the half decency not to stare this time. He keeps his eyes fixed just above his head, studying the curve of the wooden ceiling beam like it’s suddenly of great political importance.

Crown Prince's voice comes a moment later- husky and slow. “I had assumed you’d ignore my invitation.”

Mo Ran blinks.

The tone is casual, but the words land heavier than they should.

He thinks- It’s not like I was left with that choice.

But he doesn’t say that. Instead, he straightens slightly and replies, “I wouldn't dare, Your Highness! Your tea invitations will always be my priority.”

The prince doesn’t answer immediately. He’s busy buttoning up the shirt, movements slow, deliberate.

But he lets out a soft chuckle, low and amused a few beats later, “Tea invitation. Right.”

Without turning his head, he gestures lightly to the servant standing near the doorway. The man bows and slips out silently.

Moments later, he returns with a tray of freshly brewed tea, steam rising in gentle coils from the porcelain pot.

While the tea is being set, the prince finishes dressing with a long white shirt buttoned all the way up to his throat. Not a strand of hair out of place, not a hint of skin left exposed.

Mo Ran watches the transformation with something like disbelief.

A moment ago, He had looked like a half-awake dream, all loose limbs and soft hair. Now he stands like the man Mo Ran is used to- elegant, closed-off, unapproachable.

It leaves him wondering if he imagined the entire thing.

Did he really see the long line of that chest? The tousled hair brushing bare skin? The lazy yawn that had made the Crown Prince look almost human?

Mo Ran swallows, eyes dropping to the floor.

Wanning walks to the couch with measured ease. He doesn’t look at Mo Ran.

Not once since Mo Ran entered the room.

So Mo Ran remains where he is, still standing a foot from the bed. Arms loose at his sides, spine straight. He tells himself it’s patience, not pride, that keeps him rooted.

It isn’t until the prince finally lifts his eyes- those unmistakable honey dipped brown eyes, still faintly glazed with the last traces of sleep- and looks directly at him, that Mo Ran’s breath catches.

Without a word, the Prince gives the slightest nod, a flick of his chin toward the chair opposite him.

It’s nothing. Barely a gesture. But it breaks the standoff.

Mo Ran moves. Almost against his will, like something unseen pulled a string behind his ribs.

He walks over and lowers himself into the chair.

The silence settles again. But it’s different now.

It throws him off.

This- person feels like an entirely different person from the one he saw last night.

The man who’d thrown words like daggers. Blow after blow, sharp and precise. There had been no mistaking the Prince's voice then- cold, cutting, endlessly cruel. And now? Now, he sits like he’s barely interested.

Mo Ran narrows his eyes slightly, trying to read him, trying to place the shift.

Maybe it’s just the sleepiness, he tells himself.

That’s all. He’s not being strange- just tired. That has to be it.

Still, the uncertainty coils in his stomach.

“I’ll have them serve you,” Wanning, voice level.

But then, his brow twitches slightly. A frown.

“Oh. This tea is…”

He looks down at the pot, gaze lingering for a beat too long. Then his eyes lifts slowly toward Mo Ran.

“It’s the royal tea.”

Mo Ran blinks.

Was this deliberate? Some kind of test? A new humiliation tactic?

Whether Wanning noticed the sudden stillness in him or not, he doesn't pause.

“I ought to ask for yours,” he says instead, lightly. “I heard good tea from the south was brought into the kitchens.”

He reaches calmly to ring the small bell beside him. A servant appeares within moments, bowing wordlessly before stepping out again to fetch the new tea.

The royal tea.

Mo Ran had known the rules.

There are colors only royals can wear. Ornaments only the nobility can display. Styles of speech, ways of sitting, even paths through the palace- always divided. Always drawn along class lines.

But tea.

Even the tea?

The damned class.

Mo Ran gives a faint smile, tired and crooked, as the servant returns with a new pot. The scent is unfamiliar- mellow, floral, southern.

He lifts the cup when it was poured and took a small sip.

Across from him, the prince pours his own tea. No further comment.

And Mo Ran sits there, sipping politely- like nothing at all had bothered him.

Just as the silence begins to settle into something almost tolerable, Wanning speaks- quiet, but sharp enough to cut through the room.“How long will you keep up this farce?”

Mo Ran’s fingers tightens slightly around the teacup. He doesn't lift his eyes right away. Instead, a smirk curves at the corner of his mouth, smooth and practiced. “I quite don’t understand Your Highness,” he says, tone light, almost amused.

But Wanning isn't smiling.

“Stop playing Duke Mo,” he says, voice rougher now, dropping the polished edge. “Remember why you’re here.”

Mo Ran finally looks up.

The prince's brown gaze is no longer soft. The sleep haze has lifted. What sits in his eyes now is something sharper. Authority. And beneath it, something else- something Mo Ran can't yet name.

But Mo Ran’s expression doesn’t change. Not a flicker. Only his eyes with a cutting edge now shift ever so slightly. The smirk is still present, just dipped down by something more dangerous.

He sets the teacup down without a sound. Then stands.

His movements are unhurried as he crosses the space between them. Not like a servant obeying command- but like someone who wants to pretend he has the upper hand.

He stops in front of the couch where the royal heir sits. The prince doesn’t move. Doesn’t look away.

Mo Ran leans down.

Closer.

His gaze catches on Wanning's eyes- hazel, yes, but in the sunlight they glow with a molten gold, as if the rays are leaking not from the window, but from beneath his lashes.

Mo Ran watches the light dance across his irises, the tiniest details burned into memory.

Then he leans in further. Down, and down, until he’s a breath away from his ear.

His voice, when it comes, is soft. Steady. “Your Highness,” he murmurs, “if you desire something… you have to say it.”

Mo Ran pulls back a little, straightening just enough to meet prince's eyes again.

But the moment of closeness yields nothing.

The prince’s face is still wearing that same expression: cold, proud, and impossibly composed. The stubborn arrogance of someone who has never had to explain himself.

Then he speaks.

“So, you’re saying you’ll give me whatever I desire?”

Mo Ran answers immediately.

“Of course,” he says, voice crisp, “because I remember why I’m here.”

I am here to pave the way for your doom.

And the prince doesn’t hesitate either

“Good, then. Get undressed.”

Mo Ran’s breath catches in his throat. He tastes rising bitter at the back of his tongue. he feels the unmistakable burn of bile clawing upward.

He tries to hold it down.

Tries to hold everything down.

But his control slips for just a moment.

A brief, involuntary frown cuts across his features. Then, just as quickly, it’s gone.

His expression smooths into something unreadable again. Almost mechanical. The kind of look one wears to survive.

But the shift couldn't hide from the prince's invasive eyes.

Crown Prince's eyes narrow, “What’s wrong? Can’t do it?”

Mo Ran’s lips twitch into something that could be mistaken for a smile.

“It’s not that I can’t , Your Highness,” he says evenly. “I’ve just never pleasured a man in bed before.”

Prince's gaze drops, slow and deliberate, dragging once over Mo Ran’s body- an appraisal as impersonal as it is cutting then rises again, meeting his eyes without a flicker of emotion.

“Do you fear you’ll fail to grant me what I desire?”

The words hang in the air, heavy and cold. And yet, something else presses in- close, almost invisible. Mo Ran breathes in.

The prince’s scent lingers in the stillness between them: haitang blossom and morning musk. Subtle, but distinct.

It creeps into his head like wine, muddling the clarity of his thoughts, loosening his tongue in ways he hadn’t meant.

So he says it. Very daringly.

“Do you truly desire me to bed you, Your Highness?”

That’s when it happens.

Wanning's expression shifts, not surprise, not disgust, but something akin to shame or ....shyness.

He pushes the wide eyed Mo Ran back with a sudden, forceful shove. Not hard enough to harm, but enough to assert himself as to draw the line again, clearly, viciously.

And he stands. “Stop wasting time with nonsense,” he snaps. His voice is colder again, stripped of its drowsy polish long ago.

“If you want to stay, then get rid of every piece of clothing on your body.”

He pauses, then adds—

“Or you’re free to walk away.”

Free.

The word echoes dully in Mo Ran’s mind.

It sounds fake and absurd coming from the prince’s mouth.

What kind of freedom this is if it is offered with one hand while the other grips a collar around his throat.

The unbothered prince turns and walks past him as if he hadn't given Mo Ran a cruel humiliating ultimatum.

He hears the soft rustle of the prince’s slippers brushing against the stone floor, fading toward the far side of the room.

He stands in silence for a moment. He had prepared himself for this since last night. He- he is ready. But his heart refuses to still.

Yet, methodically, he begins to strip.

One button at a time. He doesn’t rush. He doesn’t let his hands tremble.

And he doesn’t look back, not even once.

Instead, he imagines those cold, mud-colored eyes on him, exacting and lustful and calculating.

Like a hawk eyeing its prey. For its meat and to study how it would flinch under its claws.

When the final piece of clothing drops to the floor, Mo Ran stands still in the morning light.

Then, calmly, with a voice that barely masks its bitterness, he speaks:

“Just so you know, Your Highness… I hold no carnal desire for you.”

He pauses, letting that truth settle between them.

“So I’ll need some help if I’m to please you.”

Finally, he turns to look behind him.

The prince is no longer watching.

He sits a few steeps away, behind a large canvas propped on an easel near the tall arched window.

The canvas itself is angled just enough to obscure the lower half of the prince’s face. It is as tall as it is wide, stretched taut with untouched linen. The light floods in from behind, outlining the prince's body in silhouette.

For a moment, Mo Ran stands there- naked, breath low, chest barely rising. Too stunned to speak.

What is this? What is happening?

Behind the canvas, the prince is calmly setting out pencils. Graphite clinks lightly against wood, measured and precise.

Arranging his tools while I was stripping away my dignity?

The turn of events doesn’t just confuse Mo Ran, it stumbles him.

Is he being humiliated or assessed? What is he supposed to do? How should he react?

Before he can say anything, the prince tilts his head slightly, peering out from above the canvas. Not a trace of interest in his pupil.

As if Mo Ran isn’t standing there, naked and braced for something brutal or intimate or both.

As if he were just a vase, a shadow, a structure of bone and skin and nothing more.

“Lie down on the bed,” the Crown Prince says flatly. “The light looks good.”

Then he just simply disappears behind the canvas again.

And it takes a minute for Mo Ran to finally move his feet.

Chapter Text

The sun creeps slowly across Mo Ran's bare skin. The sheets beneath him have gone from cool to warm.

He remains as he had been told: on his side, limbs relaxed, eyes on the back of the canvas.

Still.

Alert.

Tense.

He never truly lets down his guard.

At any moment, he expects it; the command, the touch, the turn in the Prince's voice that would signal the shift from distant observation to something far more invasive.

Behind the canvas, the sound of pencil scratching against paper continues- constant, controlled. Every so often, there is the quiet click of charcoal or the faint movement of fabric as the prince adjusts his seat.

Nothing else.

The humiliation has long stopped deepening.

It have just… flattened and settled in the crevices of his ribs.

Mo Ran had told himself that he need not unveil all his animosity. Yet, But something about the quiet scrutiny, the morning silence, the complete lack of shame on the prince’s side;

It unmoored him. He feels the itch to taunt.

“Should I place an order for an aphrodisiac on my next call?”

I can't fathom to touch you without being drugged out of my senses . That was Mo Ran's taunting message.

Prince Wanning glances up from his pastel set, and for the first time in what felt like hours, gives Mo Ran more than the passive attention of a sketcher perfecting angles.

“Have you sought it frequently? That dreary potion.”

“No but a catamite needs much to do his job, Your Grace. Those who enjoy spectating a body writhing in pleasure occasionally seek its effect.”

“ Writhing in pleasure… ”

Wanning echoes the words, as if trying them on for taste.

His eyes, now vivid and alight, remains on Mo Ran for a breath too long. Then they dips.

It isn't hard to tell where he is looking.

Mo Ran’s fists clenches at his sides.

“How amusing,”

Then, as if the conversation is nothing more than dust, he puts his charcoal back on the side table. The thud of it falling against the wood sounds louder than anything else in the room.

“Clothe yourself. On Wednesday, I expect you at the same hour.” the Crown Prince says, not looking up.

His tone leaves no room for disobedience.

Mo Ran catches the faint change in temper and gets up to dress himself slowly. Fingers steady as he rebuttons each part of his dignity.

His eyes can't help but steal glances toward the prince. Wanning who now stands by the window,  fumbling his fingers at the latch. The movements are hesitant and graceless, unlike the hands that were confidently gliding on a papers just few moments ago.

He could have called for a servant. That would have been expected. But he never calls anyone and no one comes.

No one moves in the corridor.

No steps echo in the hall.

The room is still. Empty.

“You must have dismissed everyone, Your Grace,” Mo Ran says as he ties his shoes.

Wanning turns his head slightly, his golden eyes silently inquiring.

“There isn’t a servant around. I simply wondered, my Lord Prince.”

The sunlight have shifted. It no longer filters directly through the glass, only kisses the corners of the floor.

Wanning leans on the windows, backlit, his long hair catching the breeze, swaying just slightly around his shoulders like silk stirred in water.

He doesn't answer right away. He never does. But Mo Ran learned to be patient.

“I do not enjoy the presence of anyone around me."

The sentence is offered like a fact. But something about the way he said it and the way it landed felt unfinished and unnerving.

Mo Ran straightens, now fully dressed. He studies the silhouette in front of the window and wonders- not for the first time- what exactly the prince was trying to make of him.

“It must be from the lack of funds,” Ye Wangxi says, setting down the glass she is wiping.

She stands behind the counter of the small pub she co-owns. Among the rebellion’s network, she is known as the quickest ear to the ground. Tending bar makes it far too easy- no man alive can keep both liquor and a lock in his mouth.

The pub is currently closed; the shutters are drawn. Only the four of them remain, scattered around a bartable under the amber lamplight, their drinks catching the glow as shadows curl along the walls.

“Lack of funds? That can't be. Huazai has been funding for the royal family."

Ye Wangxi hums back at Xue meng's statement.

“With the emperor barely clinging to his sickbed…Grand Duke has been plundering all the tax coffers for himself and skimping when it comes to the Crown Prince. Fewer servants, unkept halls, closed wings. It’s becoming hard to ignore.”

“But I’ve seen the ones who came to fetch me and even bring the prince his tea” Mo Ran chimes in.

“I don’t mean everyone’s been dismissed, but yes- the royal treasury’s not in good shape. Truth be told- the entire realm is starved for coin.”

“And still he wastes it on paints, diamond crusted robes and by attending endless banquets and balls…” Xue Meng lets out a low whistle, though his eyes hardens. Only few things rouse his contempt more than the excesses of nobles.

Mo Ran’s lips curves faintly. “He certainly doesn’t live like a man feeling the pinch.”

On the table in front of him sits a glass of watered-down rum. He lifts it, staring into the still surface. A memory rose- Chu Wanning’s face close to his that first night.

'I don’t need to beg'

Mo Ran’s tongue skims over his lips.

“The man with the purest royal taste,” he murmurs, “wishing to be taken like a mare in heat… How amusing.”

Shi Mei and Xue Meng both turns toward him at that mutter.

“A mare in heat?” Shi Mei echoes, then breaks into laughter.

Mo Ran sets the glass down. The rum’s syrupy sweetness lingered, followed by the other thing Chu Wanning had said- sharp, ringing in his head:

'Do you fear you’ll fail to grant me what I desire?'

“…Our Lord Mo Ran has quite the potty mouth tonight,” Shi Mei says, still grinning.

Mo Ran stays quiet, unable to put a name to the sensation that's been gnawing at him.

Ever since crossing paths with Wanning, something had been lodged deep in his chest- a persistent, needling discomfort, like an invisible hand pressing hard against an open wound. Before meeting Wanning, all Mo Ran felt for the prince was anger- or was it contempt- both had their moments. But now- something subtler joined in, more corrosive, the kind of feeling that lingers even when he tried to shake it off.

He tells himself it is Vanity . But deep down, he knows that is only a convenient excuse. Vanity is shallow, obvious, and easy to deal with. This isn't. This has weight. As if it has been waiting for years, biding its time, only to flare the moment Wanning looks at him in that infuriatingly gazeless way.

“Have you met the Grand Duke Huazai?” Ye Wangxi asks.

The question catches Mo Ran off guard. He shifts his gaze, careful to mask the flicker of surprise.

“Not yet.”

“Any approach from him?”

“None.”

“Our bait must not have been enough,” Wangxi says, picking up her glass again. “I’ll find a more fitting setting.”

Mo Ran nods. The sudden appearance of Wanning had stalled his approach to his main chesspiece- Grand Duke Huazai.

In his mind, the old man’s face rises unbidden. The snake-like green eyes comes first.

“Tell me again,” Mo Ran says quietly, “how many men he commands in his private army.”

“It’s difficult to say,” Xue Meng replies. “Even many of the palace’s royal guards are his private soldiers.”

“What about our spies?”

“Several captains with units of their own are our brethren.”

“I heard the river has begun frosting,” Shi Mei says, his voice cutting in. “Though it melts back by day when the sun rises. We need to start soon.”

Mo Ran inclines his head. Contrary to the edge of worry in Shi Mei’s tone, they still have time. The river runs deep. There is about two months before it freezes solid.

Two months. Enough time to lure someone in.

“You’ve acquired a good card in the Crown Prince, sir. Why not try casting bait on that side this time?” Xue Meng suggests, voice careful.

The words are polite, but the meaning is plain enough- use the Crown Prince to draw Grand Duke Huazai’s gaze.

It is a thought Mo Ran has been circling himself. But-

“The good card and I,” he says dryly, “seem ill-suited as companions.”

However, Wanning is not be so easily maneuvered. Mo Ran had seen as much earlier this very day. He’d schemed to make the man his mark after first bedding him- but the encounter had veered far from his plan.

From the start, they’d stepped onto uneven ground. Perhaps the fault lies in Mo Ran’s own nature, his inability to mask contempt from those he disdained. Yet another part of it is Wanning himself- he moved contrary to every expectation, a man who refused to play his role in another’s script.

“What if you act and pretend you’ve fallen in love?”

Mo Ran laughs outright. “The prince would see through that in a heartbeat.” He tips his glass back, draining the last drop.

“You don’t need to succeed in seducing him," Shi Mei leans forward, clarifying. "The prince himself isn’t the prize. What matters is letting the Grand Duke see- see how indispensable you are to the one you serve.”

“Wouldn’t that just make that mare in the palace sniff around more? He hadn't even bedded Mo Ran most probably due to his suspicions." Xue Meng’s voice is sly and uncouth, but his meaning is genuine. He isn't wrong. It is the same knot that had been tightening in Mo Ran’s mind too.

Mo Ran sits in thought for a moment, eyes lowered to the empty glass in his hand.

“I can’t be sure.”

He recalls the exchange with Wanning- every look, every word.

Mo Ran also remembers what he had thrown at the man.

“Although it might be… difficult to pretend to be in love—”

I do not harbor a carnal desire for you.

“—it wouldn’t be nearly as hard to play the fool who’s reaching for something forbidden, greedy for a pleasure he’s never tasted before.”

Should I place an order for aphrodisiac upon my next call?

He hadn’t spoken those lines with any strategy in mind at the time. But now, looking back, they feels almost prophetic. A prudent offer, he thinks, the corner of his mouth curling as he wets his lips.

His mind spins its convoluted webs. Little by little, the figure takes shape in his head- the man he needs to become. Someone wide-eyed and unsteady, still reeling from the bewilderment of being forced to share a forbidden encounter. But also someone who can be coaxed to be under delicate hands. Because he is greedy, enough to claw and cling, determined to hoard every opportunity that would bring by clinging to the prince of nation.

It is a delicate mask- one that requires him to bare his throat while keeping the knife in his palm hidden.

“Wangxi, do you have any élixir d’amour on hand?”

She nods, though her eyes narrows in mild suspicion. Mo Ran waves his hand, signaling her to fetch it. Wangxi blinks once, but doesn't question him, just slips into the back room.

When she returns, a small transparent vial rests in her palm. Xue Meng’s brows draw together.

“You’re not planning to feed that to the Crown Prince, are you?”

His voice carries the weight of a warning. Mo Ran only shakes his head. Xue Meng, ever the knight, still clung to his old-fashioned sense of honor in such matters of intimacy.

Using thumb and forefinger, Mo Ran lifts the vial from Wangxi’s hand. The liquid inside barely fills the bottom; a single swallow is enough. He slips it into the inner pocket of his jacket with care.

Shi Mei and Xue Meng continues to watch him, suspicion plain on their faces. Mo Ran's gaze is even harder to read- something like understanding, perhaps even reluctant surrender.

Mo Ran taps the table with one finger, slow and deliberate, as if working through a knot in his thoughts.

“What is it?” Xue Meng asks, arms crossed.

Mo Ran’s gaze flickers toward him, lingers for a heartbeat, then slides away.

“…I’d prefer to keep this from my patron,” he says at last.

Mo Ran’s voice softens, his eyes blinking slowly, glistening with an unfamiliar moisture that catches Xue Meng off guard.

“With time, rumors will spread- just as we predicted. They might not say I was in the prince’s bed, but at the very least, they’ll brand me a nouveau-riche sycophant.”

Xue Meng barely manages to keep his jaw from dropping. Mo Ran’s earnestness is unexpected.

“What if I disappoint Willow?”

Mo Ran liftz his gaze slightly, searching their faces, but none of the three have any words to offer in response.

“What if my patron thinks his willow has rotten?”

"What if they think I’m a lost cause and don’t come to me?”

Xue Meng tutts silently, recognizing the rare vulnerability.

Mo Ran is always the most rational, the most level-headed among their brethren. But whenever he speaks of his patron, he seems to regress- like a seventeen-year-old boy dearly in love. His expressions slips beyond control, every flicker of feeling etches plainly on his face.

Whenever he shows this side, it is a stark reminder: men are most fragile when faced with the whims of their own hearts.

“Mo Ran,” comes Wangxi's soft but steady voice, “A-Si is doing what he can. Once we track any servant of the Baroness resident down, the investigation won’t even take a day,"

Mo Ran knows that. But it already feels like an eternity has passed and he still hasn't heard from the one who bestowed him life.

Mo Ran feels agitated and buries his eyes in the back of his clasped hands.

Shi Mei cooes softly, soothing him carefully.

“We’ll find your person soon. I promise you, your letter will reach them before the year ends.”

Mo Ran huffs out a small smile.'Your person ' , he likes that word.

The tension in the room easing just a bit. Xue Meng continues in a lighthearted tone, “As soon as we find them, we’ll make sure your beloved knows the rumors are just part of the grand scheme. I’ll see that your sweetheart understands how hard you’ve fought to bring the dawn of the new world- just like your fiancé told you to.”

Mo Ran rubs his face, ears reddening.

“Ugh. Okay okay. You can stop the teasing now. I already feel embarrassed for acting petulant,” he murmures with a hint of shame.

'Beloved' 'sweetheart' 'fiancé' … Mo Ran has never dared to dream that far as he knows he is not deserving. Those words feel like they belong to another life, another man. All he has ever wanted is to remain by his god’s side no matter the form he has to take, so long as they allow him to be there at all.

Xue Meng just laughs and shrugs, while Shi Mei gives his head a gentle pat.

“I have brought élixir d’amour , Your Grace.”

Wanning’s eyes only narrow. Mo Ran sets the small glass bottle on the sofa table with deliberate care before tugging loose the cravat at his neck. His movements are measured- calm on the surface, tinged with the faint tremor of feigned nervousness.

The Crown Prince does not move from his seat, kept his chin propped lazily in one hand and a book on his another one. Mo Ran’s gaze catches the slow drag of Wanning’s fingers from cheek to jaw, the faint pink hue of his cheekbones, the subtle sweep of his tongue over the lower lips. A hum follows- low, resonant- curling in Mo Ran’s ears with the suggestion of something almost indecent.

“And—”

Wanning’s hand snaps the book. The vexation in the force is impossible to miss.

“—you are telling me, Lord Mo Ran, that you’ve brought me a dog’s mating potion.”

Mo Ran’s mouth falls open before he can stop it. He lowers his head, letting the curtain of his hair slip forward to hide the confusion in his eyes. He truly hadn’t known it was also used on animals.

Wanning’s lips curl into a scoff. “What’s with you and dogs?”

The words are tossed out like a pebble into still water, and Mo Ran feels the ripple crawl across his skin. He only swallows, but the insult stings in his throat like a fishbone, refusing to be forced down.

“I would entertain you more, but the Duke of Taxue is hosting a banquet in a week. Come, we have preparations to see to.”

The shameless prince’s voice is unhurried dismissing the verbal backhand he struck at Mo Ran as simply as breathing. Then, without missing a beat, he carried on before Mo Ran had even managed to recover.

“I would like to wear a justaucorps of silk in the color of a red rose, with golden embroidery. It would look quite dashing paired with a cream waistcoat and trousers of the same shade. What do you say?”

Prepare it for me is what the prince truly meant, of course.

Mo Ran has no complaints with being the Prince's cashcow. He had always envisioned himself parading his wealth through by using the Crown Prince as the gilded puppet and strengthening his position in the inner court more. But yet faced with such brazen, pompous, unblinking audacity a request spoken as if it were not a request at all, but a royal decree- Mo Ran finds himself bewildered yet once again in the span of 2 minutes. The sheer shamelessness of it strikes him so abruptly that a sharp and incredulous laugh burst out of him.

This filthy, shameless, base man.

He thinks he is owed all gold-threaded clothes simply because he had the fortune to be born of royal blood.

With gritted teeth, “You will look lovely as always, Your highness. I will have a tailor sent tomorrow, so he may take Your Highness’s measuremen–.”

“Don't make me banish another tailor from the palace. The measuring tape is on the bed."

Wanning cuts Mo Ran off and rises from his seat to spread his arms out, as if inviting Mo Ran to start.

This further stumps Mo ran. “I believe I am not quite skilled for the task—”

“Even a simpleton possesses the wit to take measurements, Lord Mo. Get on with it already.”

Wanning’s tone sharpens, edged with impatience. The golden flares of his iris daring Mo Ran to hesitate any longer.

Mo Ran under the sharp of the prince’s stare, can only step forward and approach the bed. Indeed, there lays the tools that the tailor has left.

Seems like a lot has happened before my arrival.

Mo Ran picks up the measuring tape and went back to where the Prince is standing.

the strip is cool and smooth beneath his touch. Taking a deep breath, he walks beside the bed, trying to steady the nervous flutter in his chest.

Without looking away from Wanning, Mo Ran begins to measure; first the length of the prince’s arm, then the width of his shoulder - all the while acutely aware of the intimate proximity between them.

The tape is worn and faded. The numbers barely visible, making it difficult for Mo Ran to read the measurements clearly. Frustrated, he tugs gently at the prince’s sleeve, pulling him closer to the window where the daylight is stronger.

Wanning complies without hesitation, stepping forward as Mo Ran’s hand grips his arm. The brief, effortless obedience goes unnoticed by Mo Ran as his attention is entirely captivated by the pale curve of the prince’s neck now expanses so close before him. Barely a breath away from his lips. The faint warmth and subtle scent lingers in the air, pulling at something deep inside Mo Ran, distracting him from the task at hand.

How easy it would be to snap this neck and be done with his plans, Mo Ran thought, a cold shiver running down his spine. A low whispering voice echoed something more dangerous in his mind at the same time: How would this skin feel beneath my palm?

“Mo Ran,” Wanning’s voice cuts through his dark thoughts.

“Yes, Your Grace,” Mo Ran replies a second too late.

“Your hands haven’t moved yet.”

Mo Ran dips his head slightly. “Forgive me, Your Grace.”

He forces himself back into focus, pushing the strange pulse in his chest aside. The tape stretches between his fingers as he works- back, shoulders, arms. Each movement is precise and mechanical. He takes care not to brush against the prince’s body, yet every now and then, the faint graze of silk against his knuckles reminds him who stands before him.

When the tape reaches Wanning’s waist, Mo Ran’s hands falter- not from uncertainty, but from design. He steps closer, closing the distance until his presence becomes inescapable. With a slow, deliberate motion, he loops the tape around the prince’s midsection and draws it taut, the pull firm yet measured. His arms curve in, just enough to suggest an embrace without ever quite becoming one.

Every movement is intentional: the faint brush of his sleeve, the controlled exhale that warms the narrow space between them. Each detail is a snare, set to unsettle, to whisper of something forbidden.

He watches closely, hawk-eyed for the smallest betrayal—a sharp inhale, a heartbeat stumbling out of rhythm, the flicker of hesitation in the Crown Prince’s gaze. If Wanning falters even for a breath, Mo Ran intends to be the reason why.

The prince’s scent, cool and faintly floral, slips past his guard. It’s for the plan, His mind insists, but yet the beat of his own heart quickens. His body refuses to let go the warmth under his forearms that stirs an uninvited awareness in his senses.

Wanning too says nothing, stays pliant under his forearms, offering no resistance, no kick on his knees. That quiet acceptance makes it worse- it is not permission, yet not rejection either.

“Lord Mo.”

The sound of his name snaps the fragile thread. Mo Ran gives the measuring tape a final tug and eases it free, retreating slowly from the cold, sweet presence of Haitang. His fingers feel strangely empty, as though they’ve been denied something they never had a right to grasp.

“Join me for lunch.”

The invitation comes evenly enough, but there’s a clipped edge to the voice, faintest trace of stiffness to the spine. Wanning does not look at him directly, as if maintaining the full weight of his gaze would concede too much. It is nothing so obvious as faltering, but just enough to make Mo Ran feel accomplished.

But he only turns away from the Prince and picks up pen and a scrap of paper from the bed. He writes down the numbers from the worn tape, each stroke deliberate, as if the task demands his full attention. In truth, he is buying time, letting the silence stretch so he will not have to answer.

The faint rustle of soft silk of the window curtain behind him tells him the prince has moved away. That quiet presence lingers at his back, close enough for Mo Ran to feel it.

As much as Mo Ran wants to progress with his play, he can not, because he doesn’t think he can stomach the palace’s steak, seared in luxury but steeped in the blood of low-born labor. The thought clings to him like iron on blood.

“Mo Ran!”

Mo Ran finally lifts his gaze to the soft voice and gives the prince his attention but he was looking out the window instead.

“You are doing it again.”

“I don’t understand what you are saying, Your Highness,”

“I must say, not many have the guts to show their distaste for me so openly in front of me," he says as his eyes trace the slow flicker of the leaves dancing across the garden. He leans back against the windowsill as if the conversation barely stirs him.

“You’re misunderstanding me, Your Highness. It’s just that I have little appetite today.”

“You must also have small virility, if you need to bring a dog’s aphrodisiac"

Mo Ran's fingers tighten  on the folded scrap of paper where he’s written the measurements. He smiles awkwardly. The bitter seed that was wafting on the surface, seems to reap inside him once more.

“Hearing a jest has summoned my appetite back, Your Grace. I will call the servants to set the table.”

He straightens and walks toward the door with a stiff nod....shaking off the prickling heat of a stare he knows surely is following him.

It is unusual for a Ducal Palace to be so far from the center of town, but the people of Taxue have always preferred to keep to themselves.

The nobility often mock the Taxue heir in private for living so far out in the fields, away from the court. Still, none of them ever turn down an invitation to the yearly feast. Even if it means spending a full day in a carriage, they will make the trip. An invitation from one of the four dukes of the Sisheng Kingdom is not something to refuse.

And the feast is more than a celebration. It is where nobles meet to talk business, build alliances and settle old scores.

Unlike–

“Has the coach been readied?”

One of these people......

Like all gatherings of nobles, it is a competition. A silent tournament where wealth and influence are measured by the gleam of jewels, the breadth of treasuries, and the sharpness of one’s reputation.

Mo Ran had always thought such contests utterly futile, the pastime of the vain. Yet living as a noble himself, he learned how critical this theater is among the aristocracy. Here, rank is survival. Appearance matters as much as land or soldiers.

So he pays a sum worth an abode for the prince’s outfit- despite knowing it will be discarded after today. Noble society frowns greatly upon anyone bold enough to wear the same garment twice. Mo Ran knows this well enough. But wasteful though it is, the Crown Prince will stand before the court today as the embodiment of Duke Mo Ran's wealth and standing. And for that, Mo Ran pays the price willingly.

Wanning stands still framed by the commotion of maids like he belongs to another world entirely. The maids circle around like leaves caught in a tsunami wind- adjusting a cuff here, rushing to smoothing a fold there- Yet Wanning barely blinks, his gaze fixed lazily on the window as though the garden beyond is of far greater importance than the flurry of activity around him. The maids dart in and out of his periphery, asking his opinions, sometimes holding up accessories for him to choose.

He answers none of them with words- only low, absentminded hums of assent.

“Yes” to both the embroidered cravat and the plain silk one, then again, "Yes" to the pearl buttons and the onyx.

Each hum is vague enough to be utterly useless. The indecision makes the maids work twice as hard, flitting back and forth to clarify his supposed choices. Their smiles tighten, their bows get stiffer. Wanning remains oblivious- or perhaps not oblivious at all- Just being haugty for the sake of getting on people's nerves.

He doesn't need much fretting if you ask Mo Ran. The clothes drape over the Prince's frame so elegant, in a way that shouldn’t have been possible, not with how carelessly Mo Ran had taken the measurements. Yet somehow, the fit is near perfect as though the clothes itself knows to worship the figure it adorns.

Perhaps it is the ruby colored justacrops. The deep red catching fire in the morning light that streams through the window and sending warm reflections across the silk, making Wanning’s fair skin look almost luminous. Or it's his hair, that glossy black cascade, framing the sharp line of his jaw and making him look like a lone deity amongst the crowd of mortals. Or is it the golden embroideries matching the caramel ombre of his iris. It might be the waistcoat beneath, cream as soft as milk, its fabric subtly patterned with barely visible vines when it shifts in the light, drawing the eye to the sharp line of his shoulders, the length of his arms, the narrowness of his waist. Mo Ran’s gaze lingers there longer than it should.

“It's been readied, Your Grace. Twelve horses pull the carriage- each one adorned with gold-lined harnesses. The coach itself bears engravings of a mighty dragon across its panels."

Mo Ran bows a little, letting the gesture linger just enough to signal that it is time for Wanning to move. But the prince remains unmoving, gaze fixed on the window before him. His mouth curves ever so slightly upward, as though amused by some private thought.

Without turning, Wanning says lightly, “Tell the driver to keep the windows open. We shall enjoy the scenery as we go.”

The only scenery you’ll notice is your half the town staring at your. Twelve horses, a gilded dragon… is this a journey or a parade?

“Surely, Your Grace. As you wish" and Moran turns to walk away, carefully keeping his little grumbling thoughts silent.

He sure is cheery today, Mo Ran thinks, watching Wanning tap a finger against the window frame of the coach in time with some tune only he seems to hear.

There's a rare softness to his profile in the morning light, the kind of beauty that would be easy to mistake for harmless- if not for the sharp mind hidden behind those caramel eyes.

The contrasting sight pulls Mo Ran’s mind away from the carriage ride and back to the conversation he’d had with Nangong Si last week.

“There might be a chance that Chu Wanning is the individual you are in pursuit of.”