The fourth year of Jinghe’s reign, the year of Guimao, spring running unchecked.

Liu Xi, the Emperor’s personal attendant eunuch, stepped toward Qionghua Palace — where the Empress resided — and first caught sight of the courtyard full of women’s garments hung out to dry.

They were not the formal robes of imperial consorts.

The Empress came from the household of a renowned chief minister, a woman of the most virtuous and proper character. Before others and behind closed doors alike, she was meticulous without a single flaw. Since her investiture as Empress, she had devoted herself to assisting in governance and observed all proprieties with strict self-discipline. Even the stern and unsmiling scholar-officials of the Censorate praised her without reservation.

By all logic, the Empress was intimately familiar with the rites and customs of the imperial palace — knowing precisely what etiquette to observe and what garments to wear for any occasion. Such youthful dresses had never been seen on the Empress by anyone in the palace.

And so the scene before him grew all the more perplexing. Liu Xi’s heart was filled with bewilderment as he followed the Empress’s personal attendants through the garden, unable to resist stealing glances upward.

It was now spring. In the garden, weeping crabapple and western-style crabapple grew side by side, their buds unfurling and their blossoms half-open, half-closed. The sky was blue as clear glass, and sunlight fell through the gaps in the branches to the ground below, where the wind stirred shadows into rustling, whispering motion.

The girls’ dresses, row upon row, seemed like the very spirits of the flowering trees given form — swaying with the gentle breeze, their ribbons and sashes floating, dreamlike and unreal.

Ash-blue sheer cloud skirts, branch-red moonlit dancing skirts, purple-orchid gauze cloud-grass skirts… all were the styles most beloved by the young women of the capital in those years.

These dresses had been kept with the utmost care, still as pristine and new as the day they were made.

Liu Xi ultimately could not hold back, and in a low voice asked Yan Luo — the Empress’s closest personal attendant walking ahead of him — “My Lady is…”

Yan Luo glanced back, then answered softly: “Yesterday in the morning, My Lady had servants bring out several large trunks sealed away since before her marriage, and found all these skirts she had worn before entering the palace. She washed and perfumed them and set them out to air in the midday sun… Perhaps My Lady has a moment of leisure and wishes to revisit some mementos of her younger years.”

The words had barely fallen when Liu Xi spotted through the great hall doors, at a distance, the Empress dressed in her formal court robes of gold-scaled purple satin and dark-lustrous brocade. He thought to himself — indeed, he had been overthinking things. Someone of the Empress’s propriety, even if she had found these dresses, would never wear them to a court banquet.

He patted his sleeves and, before even entering the door, performed a clean and crisp bow: “This servant greets My Lady.”

Luowei was holding her arms out, allowing the palace servants to perfume her sleeves with incense smoke rising upward. She simply closed her eyes, and hearing his voice did not open them, only saying lazily: “Liu Weng, there is no need for such formality.”

Liu Xi straightened up, bowing slightly at the waist, and said with a smile: “My Lady, His Majesty has returned from his spring tour and the banquet is about to begin. His Majesty, fearing My Lady might be preoccupied, has specially sent this servant to escort you.”

Last year the northern campaigns had won several victories, and with the court newly settled, the young Emperor Zhao had gone north on a spring tour shortly after the Lantern Festival. This was his first imperial progress since ascending the throne — firstly to encourage the victorious soldiers, and secondly to win over the noble families and powerful clans of the north, paving the way for him to govern in his own right.

The Emperor had been away for more than three months. This spring had an intercalary second month, and shortly after the imperial procession returned, it happened to be the second Dragon Head Festival of the second lunar month. Luowei had therefore moved the Spring Banquet — which by rights should have been held somewhat later — to this day, so that the Emperor and his ministers might celebrate together and welcome everyone back from their travels.

The Spring Banquet was held as customary on the Vermilion Terrace in the southwest of the Forbidden Palace. Liu Xi was the Emperor’s personal attendant, sent to escort her — a display before all the court of the deep and inseparable bond between the Emperor and Empress.

Luowei rode the imperial palanquin to the Vermilion Terrace, the golden crown pressing down on her head until her neck ached.

But she had long grown indifferent to such discomfort, and only sat upright and composed upon the palanquin, listening to the sound of jade and pearls clashing softly at her ears.

The entire journey was silent. As they passed through a wooded path, Luowei suddenly heard Liu Xi issue a soft reprimand ahead: “…Sir, you are being presumptuous. Apologize to My Lady.”

Luowei furrowed her brow slightly. Before she could even lift her gaze, she heard a man’s voice — languid and unhurried, with very little deference in it, even somewhat careless.

“This humble official greets Her Highness the Empress. I beg Your Highness to forgive this official’s disrespect.”

In the labyrinthine corridors of the palace, it was a common enough occurrence for newly arrived court officials to stumble upon her palanquin by mistake.

Yet after hearing these words, Luowei felt, for no particular reason, a strange sense of absurdity.

Completely unfamiliar — his manner of speaking was unfamiliar, his tone was unfamiliar, clear and unhurried, and the source of this absurd feeling — where did it come from?

She stood in a daze for a moment, unable to think it through clearly, and so she raised her eyes and looked ahead.

The palace servants carrying the palanquin continued their steady progress and had not yet passed the official who had just begged her pardon. Along the roadside, a row of attendant servants was kneeling in respectful deference, not daring even to raise their heads.

Seeing her look around, Liu Xi quickly drew close and explained: “My Lady, it is an official unfamiliar with the palace paths who has wandered here by mistake.”

Luowei asked: “Who is it?”

Liu Xi shook his head and answered simply: “This servant does not recognize him either.”

But from the meaningful expression on his face, he did not look like someone who truly failed to recognize the person.

Since he refused to say, Luowei was too indolent to reproach him, and merely gestured for him to step aside.

Liu Xi bowed respectfully, moved to the front of the procession, and cleared the line of sight for her to observe.

Luowei’s gaze moved to the young official in green robes kneeling upright at the roadside. Before she could see him clearly, he seemed to sense her scrutiny and slowly raised his eyes — then without the slightest apprehension, looked directly back at her.

The words “how brazen” caught in her throat and refused to come out.

A face as unfamiliar as his voice.

She recognized all the Emperor’s close attendants and trusted officials, every official of rank in the court, and even the scholars newly promoted in last spring’s examinations — but she had never seen this man before.

Yet the face was striking to an extraordinary degree: brows like distant mountains, parting mist and brimming with feeling; eyes dark as lacquer, their depths impossible to fathom — a face that made it impossible to look away.

The young official wore the deep green court robes common to low-ranking officials. He wore no hat, but a blue-jade lotus-flower crown, his hair slightly disheveled, drifting in the spring breeze.

He had the look of a man just returned from long travels, still dusted from the road.

Luowei met his gaze and felt, for no reason at all, an inexplicable jolt to her composure. Yet he was utterly without deference or sense of decorum, and amid the sea of prostrate servants, he sat upright and looked at her with a gaze full of smiling ease, without a trace of fear.

After a moment of eye contact, he gave a slight nod and, with deliberate casualness, blinked.

Two rows of crabapple trees had been planted on either side of the path — a different variety from those in her own palace. Because of a palace wall blocking the light on one side, these roadside crabapples were bathed in sunlight on one half, and on the other half lay in shadow.

On Luowei’s side, the blossoming trees were in full and brilliant bloom; the sunlight was strong, and a wind blew by, sending willow catkins and fallen petals swirling before her.

The young official was kneeling in the shadow on the opposite side, and the crabapple trees behind him, starved of light, were mostly still unopened buds — even their color was much deeper than the blossoms on this side.

This scene seemed vaguely familiar, as though she had witnessed it somewhere before. Luowei’s lips and teeth trembled; before she could recall why it felt familiar, and before she had time to rebuke him, the palanquin had already passed him by.

He remained kneeling where he was and did not look back.

Luowei sat upright in the palanquin and forced herself to be calm. Without realizing it, she had been clutching the handkerchief in her hand, pressing it against her chest, feeling a dull, aching sorrow welling up from inside her.

It was a long while before she let out a small, self-deprecating sound.

It was most likely just a misplaced feeling of longing — a transference born of missing someone too deeply.

Yet she did not know who this person was, that he should be so bold.

But since he was someone entering the palace to attend the banquet, when the guests paid their respects, she would likely soon know the answer.

Luowei slowly released the handkerchief, coughed softly, and Yan Luo — walking at her side — turned around and asked quietly: “My Lady, do you have any instructions?”

Luowei gave her a meaningful look and said: “The sky looks like it may turn poor. Go back and tell the palace servants to take in the garments hanging in the garden.”

Liu Xi glanced up at the sky — though it was clear and bright, at the horizon’s edge there were faint wisps of cloud, and so he suspected nothing.

Yan Luo bowed her head in acknowledgment, exchanged a glance with the Empress, and hurried away.

*

After the Empress’s palanquin had passed, the young official kneeling on the ground suddenly let his smile fade.

The row of kneeling servants rose to their feet. They saw him brace himself against the ground with one hand and cough heavily twice, his slender fingers gripping the hem of his robe so tightly that the tendons on the back of his hand stood out clearly.

A few petals drifted over from the opposite side and fell into the folds of his collar. The young man stared at the petals in a daze; only after a long while did he reach out to brush them away and stand back up.

Watching his figure sway unsteadily, a bold servant stepped forward to help, but the young man waved the gesture off. He gathered the wide folds of his court robe himself, and walked off in the direction opposite to that which the Empress had taken — pausing before he left to bestow upon everyone a warm and courteous “thank you.”

The servant who had stepped forward felt her cheeks flush red, and she dined out on this story for a long time afterward: that before the Vermilion Terrace there had appeared a young official of the most extraordinary beauty — his looks more brilliant than the spring blossoms along the road — but regrettably, no one knew his name or his rank. He had appeared briefly in the palace gossip like a fleeting glimpse, and then vanished like a creature of the spring night.