Ning Yi’s tone was calm, yet the conviction behind his words was unmistakable—he was answering the question in complete earnest, without reluctance or hidden grievance, sincere and open. At this moment, though he appeared to be no more than a young man in his early twenties—and had once, in fact, been a rather dull, bookish sort—had he still been that same old bookworm, he likely wouldn’t have been able to string together a sentence in front of Old Qin and Old Kang without stammering. And yet here and now, the air about him carried a presence impossible to overlook, matched with his bearing, giving the impression of someone detached and unburdened, unfettered by worldly concerns. Had this same presence belonged to a man of forty-five or fifty, it would have read as maturity and gravity, a steady, weighty bearing, a man whose every word carried real weight and brooked no argument.
And it was precisely because of this that his answer left the two men all the more puzzled. For a man like Old Kang to ask such a question in the first place carried no small significance, and given the nature of their relationship so far, Old Kang wasn’t exactly conducting some transaction that required repayment. An ordinary man, in a moment like this, might have suddenly grown flustered, either out of misplaced pride or some awkward excuse—but Ning Yi was clearly no such green, foolish youth. Faced with the other men’s confusion, Ning Yi let out a somewhat helpless, wry laugh.
“Ha, I understand this must seem puzzling. It’s just that…” He tapped lightly at his own forehead. “You two might not know this, but a few months back I took a blow to the head, and was unconscious for several days before I finally woke up. Most of what came before is more or less gone from my memory now, and as things stand, it’s genuinely hard for me to work up much interest in matters of rank and reputation—let alone spending my evenings with a crowd of scholars on some pleasure boat, composing poetry to win a lady’s favor. None of that holds much appeal for me these days. If anything, it’s the children at the academy who I find genuinely interesting—telling them a story now and then, all their noise and chatter—or coming out here to the river to play chess and drink tea, which I find rather comfortable in its own way. There are a few interesting ideas rattling around in my head, and perhaps, in time, something will come of them. As things stand, I’m satisfied enough with this life. As for the odd disapproving look here and there, why bother troubling myself over it? What the future holds, even I couldn’t say at this point. Still, I do understand and appreciate your good intentions, my lord.”
He gave a cupped-hand bow and nodded. “I’ll keep this in mind.”
There was, naturally, some truth and some fabrication woven through what he’d just said—he could hardly explain the actual truth of things to them, after all, and tying his current outlook to a supposed blow to the head and subsequent memory loss was, in the end, the most convenient way to sidestep the matter. It required no further explanation, was reasonable enough on its face, and spared the other party the awkward burden of unnecessary worry—simply a problem on his own end, nothing more.
Sure enough, once he’d finished, both Kang Xian and Old Qin looked rather puzzled, and Ning Yi went over the story of his lost memory once more. Only then did understanding seem to dawn on their faces. Kang Xian shook his head with a laugh. “I never would have imagined such a thing had happened.” He simply assumed that, after losing his memory, the young man’s thinking had grown a bit eccentric as a result.
After that, Old Kang let the matter drop, finishing his tea. Ning Yi picked up the whiteboard and charcoal and took his leave, heading back toward Yushan Academy. Only once his figure had vanished around the distant bend in the road did Old Kang finally let out a sigh. “Who would have guessed there was more to it than that. Struck on the head like that, and it knocks a certain detachment and indifference into him instead—a temperament like that is rare enough among the young these days. It really is a shame, though, to see such talent go to waste like this.”
Old Qin laughed and took a sip of tea. “He’s only just past twenty now—who’s to say how he’ll turn out down the road? With talent like his, whatever’s meant to come his way, there’ll be no avoiding it in the end. Still, looking at what happened today, there is something worth worrying about… my lord, this Liheng is far too pragmatic a man.”
Kang Xian frowned. “Now that you put it that way, I suppose that is indeed the case. Look at how effortlessly he tosses off one fine verse after another, and yet he seems to care nothing at all for the art of poetry itself. Ha—’when will the moon be full and bright,’ ‘hanging from the southeast branch’… His calligraphy, too, comes just as easily to him, and in so many different styles, each reaching such heights, and yet in his everyday life it seems to be nothing more to him than idle amusement. All of this, in his eyes, apparently holds less interest for him than a stick of chalk…”
Old Qin nodded. “Being practical is, in itself, no bad thing—but taken too far, with a man so blunt and direct about it, it may well cause him trouble down the road… Liheng does understand, well enough, how to seek advantage and avoid harm, but he’s still young and full of spirit, and there’s a certain pride in him on some matters. He refused to indulge those scholars testing him, turned down their invitation, and made no particular effort to hide any of it in front of the two of us—likely for that very reason…”
He thought it over a moment longer, then laughed. “No need to dwell on this further. We’re nothing more than friends brought together over a chess board; worrying too much over it would hardly be appropriate. We know well enough what’s on his mind—as for how things unfold from here, we’ll simply have to see.”
…
Over the following days, the name Ning Yi stirred up ripples large and small throughout the city of Jiangning. Anyone who’d heard of “Prelude to the Water Melody” and learned his name naturally formed all sorts of speculations and opinions of their own—most of them fairly simple at a distance, but growing steadily more complicated the closer one got to the source. Take, for instance, Old Kang and Old Qin, or the many members of the Su family—distant relatives, close relatives, stewards, servants, and so on. Closer still, of course, were figures like Old Master Su and Su Boyong. And then there were Xiao Chan, Juan’er, and Xing’er. Over the past several days, Xing’er had taken to teasing the two of them with the line about sharing the moon’s beauty across a thousand miles apart; Xiao Chan had more or less braced herself for this sort of thing, but Juan’er, who had truly done nothing to invite any of it, found her face flushing red every single time, blushing until her cheeks looked ready to scald like a little teapot. Privately, she complained to Xiao Chan: “Why did the young master have to go and write that particular line…”
And so, these past few days, whenever she caught sight of Ning Yi, she made a point of keeping her head down and steering clear of him.
Among all these people, the one whose feelings were most complicated, naturally, was Su Tan’er. To be perfectly honest, what troubled her most wasn’t how talented her husband might be, or how eccentric his personality seemed—it was, simply, that she no longer understood him.
She had originally agreed to marry Ning Yi precisely because he was simple, someone she could read easily. Even once married, with him coming in as a live-in husband, she’d be able to involve herself in the Su family’s business affairs without inviting as much criticism. Even though this marriage remained, for now, one in name only, in her heart she had, to some degree, already come to accept him. What remained, she’d thought, was simply a matter of time.
Only now had she discovered that she couldn’t read her own husband at all anymore.
Of course, at this point the matter had only just begun to show its first hints, and her husband still seemed, on the surface, indifferent to worldly ambition—not like a man harboring some hidden scheme. Su Tan’er herself was a calm, intelligent woman by nature, not one to panic easily over such things. Still, amid all her work managing the family’s various shops, her thoughts inevitably kept drifting back to the matter. In an age like this, even the most intelligent and independent-minded woman, once married, could hardly remain entirely indifferent to her own husband.
These past few days she’d remained busy as ever, managing the Su family’s various silk and cloth shops throughout Jiangning. In her spare moments, she’d sent Juan’er to the lane where Ning Yi used to live to gather information, and in the course of her business dealings, acquaintances would occasionally ask her, “Is that Ning Yi, courtesy name Liheng, your husband?” before launching into praise for “Prelude to the Water Melody.”
By rights, once they’d married, she ought to have introduced her live-in husband to the people she already knew, if only to firmly establish her status as a married woman and make things a bit easier when discussing business. But she’d been rather willful around the time of the wedding itself, and then Ning Yi had been knocked unconscious, followed by a period of recovery—by now, the pattern of how the two of them interacted had more or less settled into place, limited mostly to conversation over meals at home. Though her manner toward Ning Yi remained natural enough, being married now meant she carried herself with a bit more reserve and pride than before, and so, aside from that one time she’d mentioned attending the Pu Garden gathering, she had yet to invite Ning Yi to accompany her anywhere.
At this point, it would likely be even harder to bring up.
Gathering information about Ning Yi from various sources was something that had, in fact, already been done once before, back before the wedding—mostly arranged by her father and grandfather, though she herself had gone along with a few of the maids to have a look, and had Xiao Chan, Juan’er, and Xing’er ask around about his reputation. What they’d learned back then amounted to little more than: a simple bookworm, not especially learned, though not so foolishly absorbed in his studies as to have lost all sense either—otherwise he’d hardly have agreed to the Su family’s proposal to marry in as a live-in son-in-law in the first place. In this era, a man agreeing to marry into another family generally meant he’d resigned himself to his fate.
This time, though, when she’d sent Juan’er to ask around again, the information that came back was somewhat different.
Most of the opinions, naturally, still matched what they’d heard before—Ning Yi hadn’t left much of an impression on people back in that old neighborhood. Some households needed Juan’er to specify several times exactly which family’s courtyard he’d lived in before they finally recalled, “Oh, right, there was someone like that.” Or they’d say, “That foolish bookworm? Heard he married into some family somewhere, sold off his old courtyard too.” “Probably figured he’d never pass the examinations anyway.” Comments along these lines made up the overwhelming majority.
And yet, two or three households had offered a rather different account. “Oh, Liheng? I always knew he had remarkable talent—he’s just always kept a low profile, a steady, composed sort who never cared to compete with others for attention. Not like those so-called talented scholars who don’t have two drops of real learning in them and still love to show off—as the saying goes, a full bucket makes no noise, it’s the half-empty one that sloshes around… You must have come to ask because you heard about that ‘Prelude to the Water Melody,’ didn’t you, miss?”
“Marrying in, yes, he did marry in—there was a betrothal involved, you see. Liheng’s always been an honest, sincere sort of person; a betrothal is something to be honored no matter what…”
“That’s what the third auntie next door said, and old man Niu at the mouth of the lane too—this servant gave each of them fifty coins…” Though she was only a young maid, Juan’er’s skill at gathering information was nothing to underestimate. Thinking it over now, she laughed and offered her own take on the matter. “Though this servant does think they only started saying such things after hearing about ‘Prelude to the Water Melody’—so it may not really count for much. It’s a shame that Tutor Zou, who used to teach the young master, passed away last year. This servant did go ask around, and the young master’s old tutor’s widow barely even remembered him at all—though once she understood why I’d come, she still had some kind things to say. It seems Tutor Zou’s widow and family aren’t doing especially well these days, so this servant took the liberty of leaving two strings of coins for them, along with some smoked meat, given in the young master’s name.”
“That was the right thing to do…” Su Tan’er nodded, then laughed as well, though a thick layer of confusion still lingered beneath it. Gathering information didn’t mean simply believing whatever people said—though this round had turned up some kind words, the underlying facts were, for the most part, no different from before. It was only once Juan’er reported back on an entirely different line of inquiry that certain suspicions, which had already seemed plausible enough, began to take on clearer shape in Su Tan’er’s mind.
“Those elderly gentlemen the young master met while playing chess by the river—they may be rather more impressive than we thought… The one we know the most about right now would have to be that Old Master Kang who spoke up for the young master at the Zhishui poetry gathering…”
“Oh?” The rumors surrounding Ning Yi from before his memory loss had already been confirmed, which meant that if anything unusual truly had happened, it would have to be after that point. She’d already known, of course, that Ning Yi had gone off to play chess by the river and made a few chess companions there—though she’d never had any particular investigation done into it. What she heard now genuinely startled her; that her own husband could have come to know a figure of such standing—whether through sheer luck or something else entirely, she couldn’t say—and what followed only left her more astonished still.
The story that had come out of the Zhishui poetry gathering had simply described Kang Xian as a great master of Neo-Confucian studies, praising his accomplishments across various fields and how deeply respected he was. But the background hiding behind that description hadn’t actually been concealed all that carefully—it simply wasn’t something people brought up, and a bit of digging was enough to bring it to light.
Kang Xian, courtesy name Mingyuan, was not only a great master of calligraphy and a towering figure in Neo-Confucian scholarship—he also happened to be the husband of Princess Chengguo, making him a member of the imperial family by marriage. Though the Wu dynasty kept its imperial relatives under extremely strict control, and a princess’s husband could never take part in affairs of state or hold court office, Princess Chengguo happened to be the reigning emperor’s own aunt—which meant Kang Xian was, in fact, the emperor’s uncle by marriage. Even as nothing more than a wealthy man of leisure, a status like that was truly beyond compare, utterly out of reach for a merchant family like the Sus.
The moment this piece of information came to light, the shock it brought was almost impossible to put into words. For a moment, Su Tan’er found herself utterly stunned—but after that initial jolt passed, a relatively clear thread of reasoning began, little by little, to take shape before her.
“How on earth did the young master come to be friends with someone of such standing? Xiao Chan mentioned that they simply wandered over one day and started playing chess, quite by chance, and that’s how they came to know each other.” Juan’er looked puzzled, then grew hesitant. “Though, now that I think about it, this Old Master Kang’s status, and the young master’s own status…”
Whatever came next, Juan’er didn’t dare say aloud, but by then it was already more than enough. In the world of business, one had to constantly sift through all manner of information; sometimes a particular lead seemed almost too far-fetched to believe, and yet once every other possibility had been filtered away, what remained might well be exactly that.
Her husband’s status, and that of Old Master Kang… both of them live-in husbands…
To Su Tan’er, though such an answer might strike an ordinary person as rather far-fetched, it now felt like the closest thing to the truth at the very core of it all.
Her husband… perhaps he’d simply come to know the man over games of chess, perhaps he didn’t even know the man’s true standing at all—and yet the two of them undeniably shared this one thing in common. A princess’s husband might seem a position of great honor, but marrying a princess was, in practical terms, marrying into the imperial family as a live-in husband all the same—for all his talent, such a man could never hold office for the rest of his life, never put his true ambitions to use. It wasn’t hard to imagine him feeling a certain kinship upon meeting her own husband. That would also explain, well enough, why he’d stepped in to silence the crowd’s gossip at the Zhishui gathering and helped build up her husband’s reputation in the process…
As for “Prelude to the Water Melody” itself—her husband claimed some wandering Taoist priest had recited it in front of their house. Neither her grandfather nor she herself believed that for a moment, since Xiao Chan would never lie to her—had that priest somehow sung the poem aloud instead of merely reciting it? Whether her husband truly had composed it himself in some flash of inspiration, or whether it had, in fact, been Old Master Kang’s doing all along, was hard to say for certain. But at this point, she found she no longer minded so much. Where before her mind had been troubled by doubts at every turn, now that she’d pieced together a single coherent thread, she felt a genuine sense of clarity, and found herself far less bothered by the whole affair than before.
Her husband, in truth, had an indifferent, unassuming temperament; in both speech and action he was never the sort to provoke dislike in others. As for how talented he truly was, she found she didn’t much care either way—less would suit her fine, given that he’d married into her family, and she had no objection to that; if it turned out to be more, well, she could simply treat it as a pleasant surprise. To think there was such a hidden scheme behind that Mid-Autumn poetry gathering—if it really had been Kang Xian’s doing, perhaps it had simply been the old man’s spur-of-the-moment idea, a bit of a joke on his part.
“Just watch, old man that I am, and see how I give your wife and her family quite a fright…”
Thinking of it this way, it didn’t seem so implausible after all. Her husband’s temperament might appear indifferent on the surface, but at his age, he might well not be content to simply settle into the role of a live-in son-in-law forever. Her grandfather, though unwilling to treat him unkindly, and she herself, though she had no wish to see him looked down upon, both knew that the occasional disdainful glance was simply unavoidable for a man in his position—people would always have their own opinions about it. If this was his own way of pushing back against that, of wanting to show a bit of what he was truly capable of, that too was understandable enough.
Put that way, then… could it be that her husband was actually hoping to tame this restless, unruly young woman of his?
Some things, once decided, simply wouldn’t change—that much was the underlying premise. She had never had any particular preference, originally, between marrying out or taking in a husband; the only thing that truly mattered was that, one day, she would take over the family’s business. And given that premise, her husband could only ever have come in as a live-in son-in-law in the first place. Turning all this over in her mind, she found she didn’t dislike the possibility she’d pieced together—in fact, there was even a faint touch of fondness in it.
There simply weren’t any other possibilities left, were there?
And so, on the ride home, she found herself smiling softly, warmly, to herself…
It was a very private sort of smile—one that even Juan’er and Xing’er, riding in the same carriage, never noticed at all.