I Became the Prince Who Hates One Million — 2
Fourteen. In twenty-first-century terms, an age when you'd have only just started middle school — old enough to be locked in a contest with the black-flame dragon of your left hand for dominion over your own mind.
By sixth-century standards, however, it was an age at which marriage raised no eyebrows. On the early side, perhaps, but never so young that onlookers would recoil in horror.
At least, not by sixth-century standards.
Is this right?
However firmly the present moment insisted that Xiao Zhen and I were of marriageable age, I was still a man who hadn't finished draining out his twenty-first-century memories. Sit a fourteen-year-old and a sixteen-year-old down together and tell them to wed, and bewilderment was the only honest response.
Of course, much as a man in his thirties who had weathered the twentieth century's upheavals carried a very different face value from one raised amid the twenty-first's calm, a sixteen-year-old of this era could hardly be measured against a sixteen-year-old of mine. She certainly carried herself with enough maturity to pass for a woman in her twenties.
Still. Sixteen was sixteen.
Before I knew it, I was taking the measure of the situation.
Later Liang was a minor state — a puppet state, at that — barely managing to hold on to the single city of Jiangling, and its emperor, the very moment Sui was founded, had hurried all the way to Chang'an to pay homage in person: about as quick to bend the knee as a pro-Sui loyalist could be.
And yet it was still, technically, a foreign country, which was why Emperor Yang Jian and Empress Dugu Qieluo had received Xiao Zhen in person. Foreign princess or no, she was also before long to be their daughter-in-law.
Thanks to that, neither awkwardness nor any trace of displeasure dared show itself carelessly. Let it slip, and all the goodwill I'd stockpiled with my Confucian Man act would come tumbling down.
"Prince of Jin. Nervous, are we? How is it you stand mute before the woman who is to become your wife?"
"I beg your forgiveness, Your Majesty. You were pleased to describe her as gentle, wise, and beautiful, and so I steeled myself for the meeting — yet even that resolve proved insufficient, and I lost all power of speech."
At the excuse that had shot out of me on pure reflex, the imperial couple — Dugu Qieluo above all — broke into satisfied smiles.
This was the redoubtable woman who had demanded of Yang Jian that he father children by no woman but herself. From where a woman like that stood, watching her own son look thoroughly smitten with a single lady? Her heart must have swelled — a son like that would surely love one woman and one woman only.
And that, too, was the fruit of a solid year of favorability farming with Yang Jian and Dugu Qieluo. Had I failed to generate the image of the model son, that little silence and excuse just now would have stamped me, perfectly, as an unmanly little coward.
"A bond that held fast across thousands of li. Prince of Jin, do not slight so precious a guest — respect her, and remain at her side for life."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Even with my back bent in a bow, I stole a glance at Xiao Zhen's face. Her expression held perfectly blank — but her cheeks and ears had gone scarlet.
Call it a mercy: apparently I wasn't the only one whose nerves the big event of a wedding had frayed.
Well, since it's come to this, best to get along with her.
If the marriage was going to happen regardless, better it happen in a warm atmosphere. It wasn't as if a man born an imperial family member got to stay a bachelor for life.
And for the sake of the peaceful life of a slacker imperial family member, playing the devoted husband — after the filial son, the courteous younger brother, and the dependable older brother — didn't seem like a bad deal at all.
So I resolved to get along with her even if she felt more like a little sister than a bride. Talk often with Xiao Zhen, stranded as she was in an unfamiliar land, and pass along good food or fine things as gifts whenever they turned up.
...Because Xiao Zhen's homeland, Later Liang, would be snuffed out by Yang Jian a few years down the line. If I couldn't prevent that, then the least I could do was make her life comfortable and at peace.
And so the slacker imperial family member gained a new daily routine.
Nothing grand: presenting Xiao Zhen, newly made Princess Consort of Jin, to this body's family, and helping everyone break the ice.
Hardly a difficult task. If anything, wouldn't it have been stranger not to present a wife from a foreign land to one's own family?
"So you're a man now! By custom, a man welcomes his destined match and builds a household of his own! Congratulations!"
Yang Jian and Dugu Qieluo, having already met Xiao Zhen, could be passed over; so I went to call on my only older brother, Yang Yong.
The man invested as Crown Prince the very moment Sui was founded — the next emperor. In actual history, however, the man who would be elbowed aside by Yang Guang, demoted from his position as heir, and — once Yang Guang took the throne — sent to go sightsee along the bottom of the Yellow River.
In other words, a man with every chance of becoming emperor without a hitch, so long as I did nothing more than keep breathing.
Cheerful personality, too, and he doted on his little brothers.
Whether that came from still being an unsullied sixteen, or from a nature that genuinely held love for his family, I couldn't say.
What mattered was that the Yang Yong of the present suspected no one and guarded against nothing. Target that window, build the warmest possible relationship with him, and even if Yang Yong underwent his dark evolution down the line, my position would stay rock solid.
"Watching Your Highness the Crown Prince attain manhood before me, I have ever looked on with envy and admiration alike. To think I might now so much as follow at Your Highness's heels — what greater joy could there be?"
"Hahaha! 'Your Highness the Crown Prince' — how stiff can you get! When it's just the two of us, you call me Brother!"
The fervent flattery hoisted the corners of Yang Yong's mouth nearly to his ears.
Sixteen — the storm-and-stress years — with an emperor for a father and a hall full of ministers pressing down on him. Yang Yong must have been worn ragged day after day, so with the brother directly beneath him behaving this impeccably, satisfaction was the only possible result.
"Ah, Guang! Since you're here, why not have a drink before you go?"
"A most gracious offer, but I still have many calls to make."
"Mmm. Can't be helped, then!"
Not that I had any intention of joining a drinking bout that began in broad daylight.
After a suitably measured round of farewells, I moved on to the residence of the brother directly below me: Yang Jun, Prince of Qin.
Honestly, shouldn't it be the younger brothers calling on the elder? But they were still children, so I let it slide. Asking little tykes of twelve, ten, and eight to "come pay your respects to your sister-in-law" felt like rather a lot.
"His Highness is truly a hearty man."
"Hm?"
Then Xiao Zhen, who had been keeping her silence at my side, ventured to speak.
"F-forgive me. I was only thinking aloud to myself."
Under my gaze, Xiao Zhen bowed her head deep, at a complete loss for where to put herself.
It was a heartbreaking sight — a pitiable picture of a girl hemmed in by strangers in a strange land, watching herself more carefully than anyone.
Worse, this was a princess of a puppet state wed to the prince of a great power. At its most charitable, a step up in the world; in truth, you could say she had been sold.
She might even suspect the whole arrangement was groundwork for Sui to devour her homeland, Later Liang. And unfortunately, that suspicion would be exactly right.
"The Crown Prince's boldness and dash would make even me, his own brother, proud. That you could discern it at a single first meeting, my lady — surely that is a blessing upon the realm itself."
I took Xiao Zhen's hand as I said it and gave it a soothing squeeze; she bowed her head lower still.
"More than that — it grieves me to hear 'forgive me' pass between husband and wife. Our bond was sanctioned by Their Majesties, the Emperors of our two realms. I ask only that you allow yourself to be at ease with me."
"Yes, Your Highness the Prince of—"
"None of that, 'Your Highness the Prince of Jin.' Call me Nanggun-nim."
At that, Xiao Zhen's whole body began to tremble.
Sorry. I had no burning desire to hear the face-scorching, mortifying title Nanggun-nim either. But to soothe even a little a wife this cowed and self-conscious, I had to reach for a measure shocking and drastic enough to match, didn't I?
So for the time being, Nanggun-nim it would have to be.
From that day on, my relationship with Xiao Zhen improved by leaps and bounds.
— No such thing happened. If our bond could have advanced on so trivial an occasion, Xiao Zhen would never have needed to tiptoe around and tense up in the first place.
Still, they do say words carry weight. Swapping the stiff "Your Highness the Prince of Jin" for Nanggun-nim did soften the air between us — a little. A very little.
As a bonus, the wet nurse's gaze warmed toward me, too. The child she had tended since infancy had become a head of household, and had chosen the way of a gentle one rather than a violent one — only natural.
Mortifying, really.
I, the man in question, knew exactly what arithmetic lay behind the decision. To everyone else it might have looked like the conduct of an exemplary, family-devoted head of house; in truth, it was no more than pity for a princess of a state soon to be destroyed.
There was no love for a wife in that feeling. If anything, it sat closer to sympathy for an abandoned dog, or heartache for a little sister.
I'm sorry.
Her country falling, her standing dropping from royalty to just another powerful house — even I, a child of the twenty-first century, found it a bitter tangle to think through; heaven knew how it would sit with someone born and bred in the sixth.
Not that I could change that future. I lacked the ability, the will, and the reason.
However sorry I felt for the fallen-kingdom future waiting for Xiao Zhen, honestly, it posed no problem for me whatsoever.
If anything, it would be a problem if it didn't fall.
Jiangling, capital of Later Liang, was the linchpin of the Yangtze defense line. Once Sui took it, the Chen Dynasty to the south — crouched behind that river barrier — could be subdued with ease.
So Later Liang's fall had to be accepted. For the prosperity of Sui. For the glory of the Yang clan, Yang Jian at its head. For the peaceful life of one member of the imperial family in particular: mine.
That a nation should have to perish for the peace of a single person struck me as grotesque — but it was a country that would have fallen with or without me. Fortunately, my guilt ran thin.
"G-Good morning, Nanggun-nim."
"Mm. Good morning to you, my lady."
Even though I had met Xiao Zhen's eyes the very moment I opened mine. Even though I had just received that greeting from a Xiao Zhen whose face had gone red — my guilt went right on groveling along the floor.
Because above all else, what mattered was me.
I already took a missile to the face, died, and got myself resurrected — this life, the plan is to live easy and die comfortable.
And if, along the way, I put real care into comforting and looking after Xiao Zhen too, where was the harm? Let's help her live in such plenty as Princess Consort of Jin of the unified empire that the label "princess of a fallen state" would come to mean nothing at all.
With that in mind, I passed my days. Where the heroes of other alternate-history novels threw themselves into bending history the moment they possessed or reincarnated into a new body, I simply went on breathing as a spectator.
Whether those Gokturks up north fell into division or not. Whether the remnants of Northern Qi crumbled in the east or not.
"Ah, Father..."
Even when the Emperor of Later Liang — Xiao Zhen's father — left this world.
Though I had never even laid eyes on him, when the man who was to become my father-in-law died, I stayed quiet. I took no action beyond soothing the grieving Xiao Zhen.
Because that was what my peaceful life required.