◎Coughing Blood◎

Qu You took a step back. Zhou Tan stood where he was, watching her, his amber eyes calm and unfathomably deep — this was the first time she’d ever felt his raw, undisguised pressure directed at her.

A twenty-one-year-old official already ranked fourth grade, destined to become the youngest chief councilor the entire Yin dynasty would ever see — of course his mind worked a thousand, ten thousand times more intricately than hers.

She’d been observing him closely all this while, always feeling she could never quite get a read on him.

So it turned out even Zhou Tan’s outward calm had been an act all along. That first question he’d asked upon waking — “What do you want?” — had, in hindsight, been almost polite by comparison. All this time she’d been suspicious of him, while he’d harbored even deeper suspicions of her.

Qu You realized she’d unconsciously backed all the way up to the folding screen, and reached out to steady herself against one end of it. “I brought in a physician to save your life. I’ve managed the household without overstepping… I’m not saying this to claim credit over you, but I want to hear the truth from you — what exactly do you suspect me of?”

“The day I woke up, you said you’d trade the freedom to come and go for saving my life — that was never an equal exchange to begin with.” Zhou Tan’s gaze drifted past her toward the folding screen, then quickly moved away. “You’ve never touched the household’s money, never sought any real power, and you stood up to your own father on my behalf — I should be the one asking you: shouldn’t I be suspicious of someone who does all this?”

What bizarre logic was this — Qu You felt a knot of frustration rise in her chest. “I saved you, I’ve protected you — was that somehow wrong of me to do?”

“How could anyone in this world save me for no reason at all? Who are you really? Whose side are you on?” Zhou Tan replied coldly. “Why did you insist on getting involved in the Gu case? Why show me such kindness?”

“As for the first question — Yan Wuping already tested you at the Heart of Fragrance House. I believe you when you say you couldn’t stand aside after stumbling onto this, that you’re willing to speak up for these women. So what about the second question?”

He walked toward her, step by step, casting a slender shadow across the folding screen that seemed to close in around her. “I’ve asked you more than once — whose person are you? What do you want?”

“You can believe I’d speak up for these women — why can’t you believe I simply wanted to save you, without wanting anything from you in return?” Qu You raised her voice, anger flaring. “As for whose person I am — Lord Zhou, since you suspect me this much, you must have already investigated me thoroughly by now. It’s precisely because you found nothing that you feel the need to test me instead. At the root of it, you simply can’t believe anyone would treat you this way without some hidden motive?”

Zhou Tan said nothing, but something complicated flickered across his eyes — Qu You couldn’t tell whether it was shock or suspicion. She froze for a moment, then suddenly remembered something.

“You just admitted you were the one who orchestrated all this, and that I got drawn in out of sympathy for these women. So what about you? Let me guess — you only did this to bring down Peng Yue, didn’t you? Gu Xianghui’s life, all these women’s lives — they were all just chips on your gambling table, weren’t they?”

She saw Zhou Tan’s throat move as he swallowed, and then he lowered his eyes.

His lashes trembled, giving him a pitiful look. His voice came out hoarse, but he answered without the slightest hesitation. “Yes.”

“The moment you guessed this was my doing, shouldn’t you have already expected all of this? My compassion, your manipulation — to them, it amounts to the same thing in the end. Haven’t you heard the rumors in the marketplace? I’ve always been exactly the kind of man who’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants.”

He’d said all of this in one breath, his face turning noticeably pale, forcing him to steady himself against the folding screen beside him.

Qu You shut her eyes tightly, a thousand tangled thoughts churning through her mind.

Ever since the moment Zhou Tan had first woken, sympathy and suspicion, excusing him and taking it back, two utterly opposing emotions had been warring in her mind. She kept finding herself caught between the sentimental thought that “he doesn’t seem that bad, really” and the rational one that “he has, in fact, done all of this.”

But as a scholar of history, she shouldn’t have felt love or hatred toward him at all — she shouldn’t have felt anything.

Then she opened her eyes.

Looking at Zhou Tan before her, she realized, with painful clarity and no small amount of alarm, that she could never again view him with pure, dispassionate objectivity.

Because the man in front of her breathed, had a heartbeat — he wasn’t some cold, distant figure out of history. He was a person.

Having lived alongside him day and night, the subjective feelings that colored her judgment of him were, without question, impossible to erase now.

And so, even as Zhou Tan openly admitted to using Gu Xianghui’s life as a bargaining chip in a political power struggle, she didn’t feel the cold satisfaction of “so it’s true after all.” The first emotion that rose in her heart, instead, was disappointment.

Disappointment that Zhou Tan really was exactly as ruthless as the history books had claimed.

Perhaps it was the flash of helplessness she’d glimpsed on his face the day Gu Xianghui fell that had led her to the wrong emotional conclusion — she’d let herself drift from the historical record and mistakenly believe Zhou Tan to be an upright, honorable man, and now that he’d shown his true face, all that filled her chest was an icy hollow.

Zhou Tan seemed to read the disappointment and coldness in her expression. His lips trembled, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end nothing came out.

“They say Lord Zhou stops at nothing to achieve his ends,” Qu You said slowly. “Today, I’ve finally seen it for myself…”

“So I’m saying — I can believe you’d speak up on their behalf, but what reason do you have to feel any sympathy for me?” Zhou Tan said quickly, his jaw clenched, as if speaking any slower might let the tremor in his voice show through. “I’m no good person. Why do you act as though you’re only just now finding this out? You know exactly what I am, and yet you insist on showing me kindness — is it because you want my gratitude, or is there some other purpose behind it? Better to explain it plainly today than have me uncover it myself someday.”

“Go ahead and investigate all you like — find out exactly what purpose a sixth-grade official’s daughter, married off to you to ward off ill fortune, could possibly have,” Qu You said, studying him, unable to resist a note of sarcasm. “Zhou Tan, you really are pitiful. You’ve done so much you’re ashamed of that you can’t even bring yourself to trust the smallest bit of kindness from anyone else.”

With that, she turned away and refused to look at him any longer.

She’d already known all along that something like this from him wouldn’t be surprising — so why couldn’t she stay calm about it now?

Just then, He San knocked at the door. “My lord, the coroner has come to report back.”

Zhou Tan said nothing for a long moment. Qu You sensed him take a step forward, as if about to answer, but for some reason, no sound came.

She turned back, somewhat hesitant, and found herself looking at Zhou Tan’s face, drained entirely of color. He was bent deeply forward, bracing himself against the folding screen, gasping for breath. Seeing her turn, he instinctively stepped back and very nearly lost his footing.

Startled, Qu You rushed forward and caught him.

The motion felt achingly familiar — it brought her instantly back to the moment Zhou Tan had first woken, when the two of them had stood behind this very screen, him unsteady on his feet and her rushing to support him, the scent of still water drifting around the man with amber eyes, leaving her strangely entranced.

But this time, it seemed even worse than when he’d been recovering from his grave injuries. The moment she caught him, Zhou Tan began coughing violently, as if he couldn’t catch his breath at all.

Qu You had no choice but to wrap her arms around him, and the two of them ended up collapsing together onto the floor. He grabbed hold of her sleeve with one hand, gripping it as tightly as she had gripped his earlier, and the neatly bound white jade hat came loose against her shoulder, disheveled.

“What— what’s wrong with you?”

Qu You asked frantically, but got no answer. She looked down and, managing to make out something in the dim light, felt an icy chill spread through her entire body.

Zhou Tan was slender, and his vermilion official robes hung slightly loose on his frame, the sleeves a touch too long. At a glance, she noticed one spot was noticeably darker than the rest of the fabric — he hadn’t been able to speak just now because he’d coughed a whole sleeve’s worth of fresh blood into it!

Outside, He San knocked hesitantly at the door once more.

Zhou Tan wiped haphazardly at the blood on the corner of his mouth, and seeming to have no way left to avoid it, drew a small green porcelain vial from within his robes with trembling hands and pressed it into Qu You’s grasp.

“Help— help me…”

It was presumably medicine he carried on him. Qu You pulled out the stopper and asked urgently, “How many should you take?”

Zhou Tan, brow furrowed, let out a pained, wordless breath. She couldn’t make it out, and leaned in closer.

Without warning, Zhou Tan gripped the back of her neck. Qu You, unable to dodge in time, struck her chin hard against his collarbone, as if he’d forcefully pulled her into his embrace.

The position was far too intimate — she could hear his heartbeat again, and her body went rigid with the shock of it. At the same time, she finally made out what he was saying.

“Help me… throw it away… don’t let me see… see it…”

He gave a fierce shove, and the little green porcelain vial slipped from Qu You’s hand, shattering to pieces on the other side of the screen.