Chapter 11: Gentler Times

Hours of court had left his shoulders tight. Beneath her hands, the tension slowly began to melt away.

He closed his eyes and murmured, "This feeling… it's so familiar."

Qingyuan chuckled. "It should be. I've had plenty of practice."

"Only on me," he said, the words slipping out warm and teasing.

She laughed softly. "Who else would let me?"

He opened his eyes just enough to glance back at her. "Is that a complaint?"

"No." She pressed a little harder into a knot just below his shoulder blade, and he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "It's a fact."

"There was a time," he said, his voice taking on that slow, remembering cadence, "when you didn't know what you were doing."

"Many years ago," she agreed, and the smile in her voice was audible.

He remembered. How could he not?

Years before…

A young Xiao Heng sat on the veranda, his shoulders slumped, a pile of transcribed classical texts before him.

"If you keep this up, you'll ruin your eyes."

He looked up at the sound of the voice. A little girl, barely as tall as his shoulder, stood before him, her hands on her hips, lecturing him with a serious expression: "You've been writing nonstop since breakfast."

He reached out helplessly and ruffled her hair. "I'm almost done copying. Go see your aunt first—I'll come find you later, all right?"

"You said the same thing an hour ago."

Then, before he could stop her, she slipped around behind him.

"What are you doing?"

"Mother says it makes father's shoulders hurt less when he's tired."

No sooner had she finished speaking than a pair of tiny hands settled awkwardly on his shoulders, their touch so light it was almost useless.

"Is this how it's done?" she murmured to herself, shifting her angle, brow furrowed. "It doesn't seem right."

He let her fiddle around for a while, but eventually, not wanting to tire her out, he patted her hands. "All right, stop fussing. I'm not your doll."

"Don't move."

He laughed but let her have her way. Those little fingers continued to knead earnestly, completely unaware that they were having no real effect.

But even so—

For reasons he couldn't explain, the ache in his shoulders quietly faded.

Her warm fingertips paused briefly on his shoulder. "You smiled just now."

Xiao Heng opened his eyes. "Did I?"

Qingyuan leaned in slightly, just enough to see his expression clearly. "What were you thinking about?"

He raised his hand and gently covered one of hers. "I'm thinking of that little girl who said she'd massage my shoulders but ended up falling asleep first."

He remembered it clearly: her tiny head bobbing up and down, her soft forehead bumping gently against his lower back. He hadn't moved, just sat there, listening to her shallow breathing mingled with the sound of water dripping from the eaves, until twilight bathed the courtyard in its glow.

With Qingyuan, even time itself had seemed gentler.

Qingyuan pulled her hand away from his grasp and pouted playfully, feigning displeasure: "Don't say that."

Xiao Heng caught her hand before she could pull away, then leaned down and pressed a kiss to her fingertip: "Before you fell asleep that day, you said something."

Qingyuan tilted her head. "What did I say? I don't remember."

"You said," Xiao Heng looked up at her, a deep smile in his eyes, "'Brother Xiao Heng, your shoulders are so stiff—they're making my hand hurt.'"

Qingyuan froze for a moment, then couldn't help but laugh out loud, the corners of her eyes curving into crescent moons: "Did I really say something so presumptuous?"

A single begonia petal drifted through the open window and landed on her sleeve, its pale pink standing out against the moon-white silk like a drop of long-ago rain. He watched it for a moment, then smiled and pulled her closer.

She sat up straight and placed her hands back on his shoulders—her touch now far more skilled than it had been all those years ago—and began to work at the knots that remained.

“And now?” he asked softly. “Do my shoulders still make your hands ache?”

"They do," she said, her voice as light as a flower falling on the water's surface. "I'm used to it."

Xiao Heng smile. Every touch found the ache before he ever had to speak of it. —The awkward little girl had long since become a woman who knew him without asking.

The wind picked up once more outside the chamber, and the ground was soon covered with a rustling carpet of fallen begonia blossoms.

Qingyuan leaned in slightly, resting her chin gently on the top of his head.

"What about you?" she asked in return. "Do you still feel like I'm treating you like a rag doll to be molded however I please?"

"I do," Xiao Heng teased her on purpose, the corners of his lips curving upward in silent indulgence. "Have it your way…"

He didn't tell her that, in truth, every moment she spent by his side—no matter what she did—he never felt it was a burden.

He hadn’t known it then. Looking back now, those had been the warmest days of his life.

A gentle breeze swept past the palace doors, and a shower of begonia petals rustled as they drifted down into the courtyard.