When the incident with the hornets broke out at the Peach Blossom Banquet, the adults and the children each took it in an entirely different way.

The adults, of course, understood the gravity of it all — everything else was secondary. The most dangerous aspect was that the Prince of Rui had nearly been injured, and word had reached the palace. Whether someone had been scheming and engineering harm behind the scenes, whether the Han family would incur the Emperor’s displeasure because of it, and then there was the matter of Cui Jingyu and Ye Qinglan — all of it was tangled and troubling beyond measure.

But the world of children was far simpler.

Wei Leshui had come along with her mother to visit Cui Jingyu, and had ended up staying too. On the first day she had still been worried about Cui Jingyu, but by the second day, Yanyan had already taken her outside to play. A’Cuo had initially been unwilling to join them, thinking it too childish — but then Wei Yushan turned out to be insufferable. When Ye Qinglan returned overnight, Lady Wei had said nothing about it, but Wei Yushan was infuriated. Passing through the covered walkway, he caught sight of Yanyan and Wei Leshui playing in the courtyard and immediately said: “Hmph — you still have the heart to play? Just wait until Elder Brother Cui wakes up and finds your sister gone from his side. We’ll see what she does then.”

At these words, even Wei Leshui grew anxious: that’s true — Cui Jingyu had been injured saving Ye Qinglan, and yet when he woke, she wouldn’t even be by his side. How heartbroken he would be. Just the thought of it was too much to bear.

But Yanyan, hearing this, felt not the slightest concern. Without even raising her head, she went on playing with her little stones and said: “My sister went home because something important must have come up — she wouldn’t have left otherwise. Elder Brother Jingyu isn’t as foolish as you — he’ll certainly understand.”

“If he understood so well, he wouldn’t have been nursing this grudge for so long,” Wei Yushan snorted in irritation. “Ye Yanyan, you are absolutely useless — you’re not even as good as Ye Lingbo. At least she knows how to do something of substance. You’re fifteen already, and all you do is play!”

Yanyan raised her head, looking at him with an odd expression.

“What?” Wei Yushan wrinkled his nose in disdain.

“You really are a strange one. Didn’t you block our carriage before? Why are you so anxious now? Do you actually want my sister and Elder Brother Jingyu to be together, or not? Have you made up your mind?” she asked Wei Yushan in genuine bewilderment.

Wei Yushan was left spluttering with no reply — and at that very moment, A’Cuo happened to be nearby, having caught every word, and immediately let out a cold laugh: “He would of course be perfectly happy for Lord Cui and Elder Sister to be strangers to each other for the rest of their lives.”

The moment Wei Yushan heard her tone, he knew she was angry. Seeing her say her piece and turn to walk away, he had no choice but to chase after her to make amends.

And so the courtyard fell quiet once more. The Water Pavilion was actually small — though it had rooms for resting, the courtyard was not large, and everyone drifted through the same space. Yanyan played with her stones for a while, and found she was short on white ones. She wanted to take Wei Leshui to the water’s edge to gather more, and had just gotten to her feet when a cold voice rang out: “Don’t go wandering off everywhere. The guards have done a sweep, but there’s no guarantee there aren’t stray hornets still lurking outside — if one of them stings you, you’ll know what trouble feels like.”

The two of them turned and looked. It was none other than Yuan Xiu, who was always to be seen in the company of the Prince of Rui. He was, truth be told, quite handsome — only his character was far too overbearing, and he was always wearing that look of disdain for everyone around him. He had stayed on to recover from his injury, and Han Yueqi didn’t quite know how to accommodate him — she had offered him a room in the main Han residence to rest, but he refused to go, and simply remained here. It was plain that his standing was above that of an ordinary guard — the palace had even specially sent an attendant out to wait on him.

It was a gloriously sunny day, blazing with light, and he was draped in a brocade robe. Two stings on his hand were being treated as a matter of great gravity — wrapped up as plump as a rice dumpling, the hand even slung around his neck in a sling — the very picture of a man who had suffered a glorious wound in battle.

Yanyan, who was always warmly grateful to those who helped her, immediately went over and smiled at him with cheerful guilelessness, asking: “How are you feeling? Does it hurt at night?”

“Do you think I’m you, with such a low pain tolerance?” Yuan Xiu regarded her with contempt, and yet he was the one who sought her out to talk, asking: “What are you arranging with those stones?”

“I’m setting out a chess problem,” Yanyan said with a grin.

“You know how to play chess?” Yuan Xiu glanced over, and upon seeing nothing but a heap of broken pebbles, knew she was talking nonsense again. With disdain, he said: “Once I’m back at the palace, I’ll have that chess set of mine sent to you. The white pieces are made of mutton-fat jade, the black pieces of ink crystal — there’s only one set like it in the whole palace, and I’m giving it to you, lucky girl.”

“If there’s only one such set in the whole palace, how did you come to have it? And then what will the Emperor use when he wants to play?” Yanyan asked with childlike simplicity.

Yuan Xiu was amused despite himself.

“The Emperor naturally has something better. Do you think that’s any concern of yours?”

Wei Leshui was not pleased to see that he spoke to Yanyan with such disrespect. She waited until he finally left, then fell into a somewhat sullen mood, and even when Yanyan laid out the stones for her to play, she couldn’t quite muster any enthusiasm. After a while, she suddenly said: “Yanyan, don’t be like this anymore.”

“Like what?” Yanyan didn’t understand, and her face still wore its smile.

“It’s just…” Wei Leshui was gentle by nature and worried that speaking too bluntly would upset Yanyan. Yet when she tried to be indirect, she couldn’t quite say what she meant, and at last settled for: “It’s just — don’t treat everything as if it doesn’t matter. Don’t live so simply, without thinking deeply. My mother was just saying to me the other day — we’re grown-ups now, we can’t keep living like this. We have to take on responsibility, we can’t keep expecting others to think of everything for us.”

Yanyan still wore the same expression as always — her bright, wide eyes fixed steadily on her — with no indication of whether she had understood.

Wei Leshui felt a wave of despondency, and had just lowered her head to go back to the stones, when she suddenly heard Yanyan ask: “Do you know why my eldest sister broke off her engagement?”

Wei Leshui was startled, and was just about to ask why, when Yanyan continued: “Do you know why my second sister works so hard to earn money?”

“They work so hard and endure so much — all because they hope I can live a life free from care and worry,” she told Wei Leshui. “And so by living without care and worry, by not troubling my mind with things — that is the finest way I can repay them. Otherwise, what would all their hardship and sacrifice have been for?”

In the bright light of that clear morning, Yanyan sat with her hair done in twin buns, decorated with beautiful red velvet flowers. She looked like a jade maiden seated before the bodhisattva in a temple, her face bright with a radiant smile. It had been the same the very first time they met — and with a start, Wei Leshui realized that through all these months of the Huaxin Banquet, everyone around her had changed, and yet Yanyan remained exactly as she had been from the very first moment Wei Leshui had laid eyes on her.

For just a single instant, Wei Leshui nearly felt as though she had never truly known Yanyan at all — as if everything that had passed between them, like Yanyan’s smile, was nothing more than the gilded clay of a temple sculpture.

But then Yanyan laughed again, as guileless as ever.

“All right — let’s go to the stream and find some more stones to play with. Let’s see if we can lay out the solution I worked out.”

Had Yuan Xiu not been so busy showing off his chess set, and had he instead taken a genuine look at that heap of disordered stones — he would have been astonished to discover that what lay before him was no random arrangement. Among all the unfinished games in the Emperor’s Zhenlongge collection of chess records, it was the solution to the most difficult of all.

But Yanyan was already pulling Wei Leshui along at a run, and as she went, she trampled right over the pile of stones and scattered the whole game apart.

Long ago, before Lady Ye had passed away, she had brought out the books from her dowry collection to teach her daughters their letters and give them their early education. She had spoken to them of the great schools of thought from across the ages. Qinglan had naturally studied the classical writings of the sages — to be a lady of orthodox Confucian virtue, so that she might stand as a model among the daughters of noble families. Lingbo had not applied herself seriously, and had mostly gravitated toward Yang Zhu’s philosophy of self-preservation and the pursuit of benefit — which was why she managed a household and ran shops with such ease and competence.

And then there was only Yanyan — in all those years when her sisters were fighting battles in the wider world, she had all the time in the world. With snacks and candied fruit at hand, she had taken the books Lady Ye had left behind and read through them, one by one, until the last page.

Because she had been frail and sickly in childhood, everyone had long since stopped using her formal name and called her only by her childhood name, Yanyan — and after being called that for so long, people gradually forgot that she even had a formal name at all.

Qinglan and Lingbo could stir up roiling waves in the capital, but she was the small and gentle ripple, the wind that rose from the tip of the green duckweed. Everyone knew her to be guileless and innocent, without a trace of cunning — and so no one ever looked beneath the surface of the water to see what force had been quietly guiding all the scattered leaves into their present positions.

A pity — in the end, Yanyan never did manage to take Wei Leshui to the stream to gather white stones. A matron came hurrying in, and upon catching sight of Yanyan — knowing this Third Young Miss never handled household affairs — hastily called out to the others instead: “Lin Niangzi, Cousin Young Miss, Third Young Miss — great joy, great joy!”

A’Cuo, who by now carried herself with something of Lingbo’s manner, walked out with Lin Niangzi, asking as she went: “What joy?” — while at the same time gesturing to Yang Hua to prepare a tip.

“Cousin Young Miss, it is truly wonderful news,” the matron said, beaming with delight. “Our Second Young Miss has gotten engaged — and Young Miss, guess to whom? None other than the imperially licensed merchant who serves the Pingjun Prince’s residence — Master Dai Yuquan.”

Everyone was both startled and delighted — startled because none of them knew who this Dai Yuquan was, and delighted because this was the first joyful occasion in the Wutong Courtyard in the four years since the broken engagement. And besides, everyone understood how Lingbo’s mind worked — any match she set her eye on would certainly have been considered from every angle.

Amid the general rejoicing, there came one person to throw cold water on it all. Yuan Xiu was just making his way out with two palace attendants when he heard the news, and gave a cold snort: “Dai Yuquan is amusing, I’ll grant him that — they say you should first establish yourself before starting a family, yet he came all the way from Jiangnan, and hasn’t even finished the business the Emperor sent him to do before he’s gone and started a family first.”

Had any official been present, they would have immediately recognized that rather than throwing cold water, he was in fact confirming that Dai Yuquan’s prospects were limitless.

But A’Cuo and Lin Niangzi couldn’t parse the subtext, and paid him no mind. The news also stirred up Lady Wei, Wei Shanhu, Fu Yunrui, and the others inside, who all came out to offer their congratulations and said they would go to the Ye residence to celebrate with Lingbo.

Amid all the commotion, Yanyan drifted slowly over toward Yuan Xiu, who was preparing to leave.

“You’re going back to the palace already?”

“Obviously — can’t you see they’ve packed up all my things? If not back to the palace, where else would I go — fleeing a famine?”

“But then what about the box of sweet snacks I sent you?” Yanyan immediately grew anxious.

Yuan Xiu’s expression was all contempt, yet the words that came out of his mouth were in fact helpful to her: “Are you simple? Send them to the Prince of Rui’s residence, and I’ll naturally send someone to collect them.”

“Oh.” Yanyan nodded with great sincerity. “Then can you do me one more favor?”

“What favor?” Yuan Xiu said coldly. “If it’s about your sister’s marriage — I won’t help. The Emperor hasn’t decreed anyone’s marriage in hundreds of years. Even if you beg me, it won’t work.”

“It’s not that.” Yanyan smiled and said: “I just want you to pass a message to Sister Shen Biwei — my second sister and she are the closest of friends, and now that she’s engaged, Sister Shen doesn’t even know yet. She’ll certainly be upset when she finds out.”

“Such a trivial thing, and you need to say it to me.” Yuan Xiu was thoroughly contemptuous. “All right, the message will be delivered. Will your family have the standing to attend the Spring Hunt?”

Yanyan shook her head honestly.

“Then I’ll add your family’s name to the list.” Yuan Xiu waved his hand with casual flair. “I’m off — see you at the Spring Hunt!”