Extras (7): Ke Mu – end

The morning after that night, Mu Jingxu moved out of the courtyard.

When Ke Hongxue returned at midday, he saw the door to the west wing standing open. A few bookboys were hauling boxes in the yard. Mu Jingxu stood beneath a locust tree near the wall, brows lightly drawn, eyes half-lowered, as if quietly watching an ant pass by on the flagstones… or a green leaf that had fallen by chance.

At the sound of movement, he looked up. Through the dappled shade of summer foliage, he cast a fleeting detached and unreadable glance at Ke Hongxue… and then lowered his gaze again, as if the vulnerability and plea of the previous night had never taken place.

Ke Hongxue felt a sudden, inexplicable tightness in his chest. He frowned faintly, turned away, and went back to his own room.

Just before the door closed behind him, he glimpsed Mu Jingxu stir at last beneath the tree. The already-muted sounds of moving. Boxes, luggage, footsteps grew even softer. One could not tell whether it was out of deference to the heavy hush of summer, or for fear of waking someone from a rare and fleeting dream.

Strangely, it was in the midst of that gentle rustling that Ke Hongxue fell asleep. When he woke, the west wing stood empty again, the courtyard returned to how it had always been… just as if no one else had ever come or gone.

The southern quarters were still under repair; Ke Hongxue had no idea where Mu Jingxu had moved to.

But after all, this Senior Mu was top of his class, handsome besides. Despite his glacial demeanour and distant airs, the others could not help but speculate about him.

The very next day, someone sidled up to Ke Hongxue and said in a whisper, “Mu Jingxu’s moved into the headmaster’s own courtyard! I told you the master must be playing favourites. What ordinary student gets to live there?”

Ke Hongxue’s brush paused mid-sentence. A beat later, he resumed his essay as if nothing had been said.

He did harbour suspicions, but then, Mu Jingxu had always struck him as dangerous. It was Ke Hongxue himself who had issued those cutting words. And it was he, too, who had known best to keep his distance.

He’d meant what he said, meant it sincerely. But even now, he couldn’t say for certain how far he might go, how excessive he might become, where Mu Jingxu was concerned.

He cleared his mind of what he’d heard, brought his argument to a close, and took out his personal seal. With a soft press, he stamped the final page.

A nearby classmate peered over and let out a low whistle. “A seal of mutton-fat white jade. Typical of the Ke family’s cold-blooded prodigy.”

Ke Hongxue glanced down and replied offhandedly, “I’ll send you one another day.”

The stone had been sourced by his academic uncle; the seal carved by Ke Wenrui himself. As for the piece that Sheng Fuze had once given him—

Ke Hongxue lowered his eyes, tucked the seal away, and smiled. “Fancy a drink?”

“Let’s go!”

Summer was mad with heat and laughter. Long days, brilliant nights.

Ke Hongxue passed the season writing essays, drinking wine, listening to music. On the day of Liqiu, the formal start of autumn, the Ke household sent over several crates of watermelons for the scholars and masters.

As usual, Ke Wenrui and the principal had been exchanging letters. Ke Hongxue held the envelope, while the bookboy behind him carried a large watermelon. The two made their way to the master’s small courtyard.

Just as they caught sight of the gate nestled in the bamboo grove, Ke Hongxue faltered. The bookboy, caught unawares, stumbled forward and bumped him. The watermelon slipped from his arms and split on the ground with a soft thud, scattering its pulp across the flagstones.

“Y-Young Master…” the boy stammered, anxious and mortified.

Ke Hongxue blinked, returned to himself, and stared for a moment at the mess. Then, quietly: “It’s nothing. Clear it up and fetch another.”

“Yes, sir!” The bookboy darted off in search of a broom.

Ke Hongxue stepped toward the courtyard gate.

It had been a fleeting hesitation. He’d simply remembered that Mu Jingxu now lived here. Since that summer night, they had scarcely crossed paths in the academy. It was as though the other had been deliberately avoiding him. Perhaps because of a single sentence: “It’s best you stay away from me.” And Mu Jingxu had obeyed. Had not come near him once.

And yet now it was Ke Hongxue himself walking into the headmaster’s domain. This was Mu Jingxu’s new territory. How was one meant to tally the score?

He frowned, momentarily uncertain. But the thought passed.

He was here to see the master. It had nothing to do with Mu Jingxu. Even if they met by chance, it would be no more than that: coincidence.

With that settled in his mind, he made his way familiarly to the study. But just as he approached, he caught the muffled sound of a cough.

Memory stirred at once. Ke Hongxue slowed. A liar, he thought. Didn’t he say the cough was from travel? Then who’s coughing in broad daylight now, if not Mu Jingxu?

The door was closed… perhaps to keep out the early autumn wind. Inside, he could just make out the quiet murmur of voices. Ke Hongxue furrowed his brow and turned to wait at a distance, thinking he would knock once they’d finished.

But just as he moved to step away, a low, hoarse voice reached him from behind the door:

“The master wrote to me that all was as before. But I hadn’t realised ‘as before’ meant becoming someone else entirely.”

As if bewitched, Ke Hongxue froze. His limbs wouldn’t obey him.

A second voice followed—older, worn: “Do you not find Hanying familiar, Your Highness?”

Mu Jingxu replied, “I’m just a commoner now, sir. Why address me so? …Familiar? How could I not find him familiar?”

The old man said: “I gave him the courtesy name Hanying. Winter’s hongxue, crimson snow. He was never meant to need anything to lean on, nor to change himself for others. He only had to be Ke Hongxue. So why must he become my Sheng Fuze?”

The qi of summer still clung to the air. Though it was already Liqiu, the season refused to yield. Hheat lingered, cloying and heavy. The cicadas shrieked the last of their lives into the afternoon, ready to drop dead on some cooling night.

Ke Hongxue stood motionless. His pupils shrank; his mind emptied. A tremor rippled through him, subtle but bone-deep, as though death had brushed past.

He forgot to breathe. It felt like a dream. He couldn’t tell if it was nightmare or miracle… only that if he moved now, it might vanish.

Inside, the person that he ought to refer to as “Senior” in study continued: “I had hoped he might live freely… pursue scholarship, or trade, or whatever else he wished. The Ke family could shield him; I could keep him safe. But what is this now? That cage, five years ago. Was it mine, or his?”

Rational thought unravelled, scattered like ash. Before Ke Hongxue stood the little courtyard of the headmaster’s estate. Beyond that, the study.

He had come to deliver a letter from the Grand Tutor. And a watermelon for the first day of autumn.

And now… what had he heard?

A voice carried faintly from beyond the courtyard wall, dragging him back to his senses. His legs were leaden. He couldn’t lift his feet. But something inside him insisted he must go. Now.

There was no logic to it, only instinct. He had no right to be here. No right to confront them about what he had just heard.

He’d long suspected that Mu Jingxu had come to the academy with hidden motives. Long believed his intentions were impure.

What’s more, perhaps today had been a trap. Perhaps the entire thing was staged: to lure him here, to plant these half-truths in his ear.

The truth had never been so close. And yet Ke Hongxue’s first reaction… was disbelief.

He summoned ten thousand refutations in his mind. Played out every scenario in which Mu Jingxu and the headmaster had colluded to deceive him.

Why?

He pressed his lips together. They were parched, cracked in the heat.

At last, he turned and began to walk away.

Just beyond the gate, the bookboy came jogging back with another watermelon. “Young Master!” he called.

Ke Hongxue nodded calmly. “Go on. Don’t say I was ever here.” But in truth, his mind was a complete mess, his thoughts churning like a pot at full boil.

His heart pounded so violently in his chest that it felt as though it might burst free at any moment, yet his expression remained composed, as if nothing at all had happened.

In the years he’d spent as Sheng Fuze’s disciple, he had long since lost the ability to distinguish between what was pretence and what had fused into his very bones, becoming part of his truth.

Ke Hongxue was himself. Sheng Fuze was also him. They were always meant to be the closest of kindred spirits in this world.

He took a few steps forward. The autumn breeze, still carrying a trace of warmth, brushed his cheek. At last, he had his answer.

It was fear.

Because the only thread of truth he could reach for felt far too fragile, too dreamlike. He couldn’t bear even the faintest doubt that it might be false. So he chose to deny it from the outset.

He could accept that Sheng Fuze had died on the road south five years ago, his head hung from the city walls.

But he could not accept the possibility—however slim—that he had once again been deceived after daring to hope.

Only once every fact had been verified could he allow himself even a sliver of belief in that earlier exchange.

Back in his own courtyard, the skull was still on the table, gazing back at him.

Ke Hongxue stared at it for a long time, dazed.

He could read direction from the veins of a leaf, divine fortune from the stars, compose poetry with a flick of his wrist, or trade gossip over wine with ease.

But he had no way of discerning what a bare skull would have looked like once clothed in flesh.

He had never once doubted that this might not be Sheng Fuze’s head.

Now, someone had offhandedly claimed he’d been mistaken all along. Someone had said Sheng Fuze had given him a courtesy name. Someone had said Sheng Fuze was alive, had come back for him, and he had driven him away.

His fingers curled tighter and tighter. The envelope in his hand was crushed into a ball.

Snapping out of it, Ke Hongxue lowered his gaze and stared at the crumpled letter. He stood there for a long time, deep in thought.

To take what is not offered is theft. A gentleman does not read what was not meant for his eyes.

But something unseen compelled him to open it. Ke Hongxue hesitated for a long while. And in the end, he allowed himself to be small and mean… just this once.

And then he saw the final line: “Is His Highness well?”

His grandfather, the Imperial Grand Tutor, had written this, asking his own disciple after the wellbeing of “His Highness”.

Which Highness?

Sheng Fuze.

Ke Hongxue stared at those four characters, his eyes slowly turning bloodshot. Veins of red spread like cracks in porcelain. He glared at the letter, and then he began to laugh.

A laugh that tore straight through him, that might have ripped his lungs out. A laugh soaked in blood and tears.

Their reunion hadn’t begun with cutting words, but with a quiet, deliberate reminder. A warning.

It told him that Ke Hongxue, who had been praised all his life for his wit and discernment, had been so blinded by grief and yearning that he’d spent five years worshipping the wrong skull.

The head he had rescued from the jaws of beasts, cradled in his arms, and defended with his life for five long years… had never belonged to his Third Highness.

Ke Hongxue laughed until his stomach cramped. When his page boy returned, he had already calmed down, though the corner of his eye still carried the streak of bloody tears.

The boy blanched with fear and was about to speak when Ke Hongxue rasped out, each word jagged as broken glass: “Prepare the carriage.”

That night, the grave of “Sheng Fuze” was opened. A skull was buried. A piece of white jade was unearthed.

Three months later, when the first snowfall of winter dusted the capital, the newly-built dormitory in the southern wing of Linyuan Academy was completed. On the day Mu Jingxu moved in, he saw a flurry of servants moving items into the west wing with great pomp.

A figure dressed in a fiery red coat, gold-stitched sheepskin boots, and a cloak fluttering in the wind strode in like nobility incarnate.

Ke Hongxue’s peach blossom eyes curved with a smile as he approached.

Casually, he asked, “I’ve heard Senior is a prodigy. Master of the four arts. I wonder… can you carve a seal?”

He lifted his wrist.

Resting in his open palm was a wordless seal of white jade, buried in the ground with a bundle of clothes for five years, yet still glowing with a soft inner light, untouched by darkness.

A boy’s hidden longing once carved into silence aboard a pleasure boat on Jinfen River, now laid bare between the two of them.

Behind them, snowflakes danced in the wind.

Standing below the steps, Ke Hongxue looked up at Mu Jingxu. Snow crystallised on his lashes, but he smiled, elegantly, warmly.

The very picture of the world’s most dazzling youth.

“Let’s make a deal, Senior,” he said. “You carve me a seal. I’ll give you the Ke family.”

Its power. Its wealth. Its standing. Its connections. And me.

Everything. Whatever you want, I will give it to you.

I don’t care what you’re after. I don’t care if you’re still lying to me. You came back. You came for me. So be ready. For me to cling to you for a lifetime.

I am the one in this world who most resembles you. I am your other self. We are fated to share a bed, and die in the same grave. Bound together in every life to come.

This is what Sheng Fuze owed me. It is Mu Jingxu who must repay it.

If you long to bathe in fair weather, how could you ever do so without enduring Hanying’s relentless winter?

Ke Hongxue smiled faintly, tilting his head back to look at him. And in that moment, there was no one else left in the world to see.

“Senior,” he said softly, “it’s been a long time.”

Your Highness, may this time, you truly be well.

………

The translator (PurpleLy) has something to say:

It’s not over yet! There are two more extra chapters after this one!