The General's Star (2)
Having settled my thoughts on what to do about Sun Jian, I rose from my seat.
Sima Yi looked up at me. "Where are you going all of a sudden?"
"The clinic."
"The—the clinic?!"
At that one remark, Sima Yi all but leapt out of her seat in alarm.
I gave her a puzzled look. "Why are you so startled?"
"How is this not startling?! You're always in perfect health, and now you suddenly say you're going to the clinic!"
Startled out of her wits, Sima Yi bustled to my side and began looking me over from every angle.
"Tell me exactly where it hurts and how! If I don't hear at least that much, I'll be too anxious to sleep tonight!"
Ah, so that was why she was shocked. Sima Yi had assumed I was ill and on my way to the clinic for treatment.
I let my gaze drift around the room to take the measure of everyone else. Jia Xu, who wore a composed expression no matter what happened, had her eyes wide open, her feelings written plainly across her face. Considering I could count on one hand the times I'd seen Jia Xu show emotion like that, she must have been utterly stunned.
But Seo Yeo's reaction, as she guarded me at close quarters, took the cake. Her eyes trembled without pause, as though an earthquake had broken out inside them. I hadn't shown the slightest sign of feeling unwell, so my sudden announcement that I was headed to the clinic was, for Seo Yeo, more than enough cause for alarm.
"It's not that I'm ill. I have a request to make of one of the physicians, so I'm heading over."
"...You're telling me the truth?"
When I explained in a level voice, Sima Yi narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
"Why would I lie about something like that?"
Judging by the reactions around me, a streak of mischief had surfaced in me for a moment there, but even so, I wasn't about to make sport of people who were worried about me. One wrong move, and they might slap me under house arrest, ordering me to go nowhere and rest up.
...Come to think of it, that didn't sound half bad.
I put on a deliberately playful air. "Do I look like the kind of man who'd grin and bear an illness and throw himself into state affairs anyway?"
"Yes."
Huh?
Her answer left me nonplussed. I had braced myself for something faintly heartrending — Of course not. You're not that kind of person. — so having it confirmed the other way round left me floundering.
"Right now you're joking around, insisting you'd never do such a thing. Did you really think I wouldn't see through that?"
Without a moment's deliberation, Sima Yi affirmed my question, then looked at me flatly.
"I can see clear as day how a good-natured softie like you, General-in-Chief, would behave."
"..."
"'I'll rest after just this one thing,' you'd say — worrying everyone while quietly wearing your body down, until one day you simply keel over. Am I wrong?"
"Hmm..."
At her words, I let out a low groan. I was hardly the type to perform wonders of playing hurt — wasn't she rating me a touch too highly?
"And there's that look again, like there's no way you'd ever do such a thing."
"Because there isn't."
The people around me did have a tendency, now and then, to hold me in far too high regard. I was the sort of man who would file for sick leave the instant he felt something wrong and hole up at home — what on earth had they seen in me to think otherwise?
"Well, who knows. We shall see, won't we?"
Even faced with my baffled manner, Sima Yi did not yield an inch of her opinion.
"People have a funny way of acting contrary to what they said, once they actually find themselves in the situation."
Startlingly on target, for words from a girl who had yet to undergo her coming-of-age ceremony. Sometimes she really didn't seem like a child at all, but a grown adult.
Having said her piece, Sima Yi asked bluntly once more, "In any case — you truly aren't ill, are you?"
"I'm not. So don't worry."
"Then that's fine."
Sima Yi swept her eyes over me one last time, then chose to take me at my word.
I turned my gaze back to Jia Xu and Seo Yeo. Having listened to the whole exchange, the two had returned to their usual expressionless faces, as if nothing had happened at all.
I was curious, I'll admit, what Seo Yeo would do if I were genuinely ill and forcing myself to hide it. She couldn't quite bring herself to drag me off by force, but she would surely contrive some way or other.
Seo Yeo was a girl who displayed transcendent ability in anything involving the use of her body, so even if I played at being fine, the odds were high she would see straight through me. When I had briefly parted from her for an audience with the Emperor, had she not said that if she merely inclined her ear, she could tell what was happening wherever I was?
Would a woman who could sense events unfolding on the far side of a wall fail to notice her lord straining to look well? Absurd.
That, no doubt, had played its part in why Seo Yeo had been so thunderstruck just now.
"Anyway, I'm off to the clinic now. What will you two do?"
At my question, Jia Xu glanced outside, then answered with perfect courtesy, "It has grown late, so I will take my leave for today."
"All right."
It was late enough that heading home would raise no eyebrows, so I nodded. Jia Xu bowed and withdrew, and I turned my head to Sima Yi.
"...If I head back late too, my sister will nag me, so I should be going as well."
I nodded. However fine Luoyang's public order might be, no family would let a young girl wander the streets deep into the night. True, the guards patrolled after dark with eyes like fire, but reason and emotion belonged to separate realms.
Before turning to go, Sima Yi looked back at me. "If you do fall ill, you must tell me. Promise?"
"I will. Thank you for worrying about me."
"...I wasn't worried."
Hearing my thanks, Sima Yi tossed back her usual blunt retort and turned on her heel. Honestly — a walking bundle of charm, that one.
Once I confirmed she had stepped outside, I set my halted feet in motion and left the government office.
The sun had gone down and dusk was creeping in, so the citizens who had been enjoying their daily lives outdoors were drifting away one by one. One person, wiping sweat as they tidied up in front of their shop, slipped inside; another strolled off with their family, faces bright with easy laughter.
Even amid it all, I crossed paths now and then with guards on patrol — at the very least, public order seemed to have nothing to fear.
I walked on like that for a while, until the sun sank away entirely and the moon rose, drawing night down over Luoyang.
I arrived at the clinic, which stood not far from the government office. Though the hour was already dark past sundown, lamplight glowed warmly within.
I rapped on the door as a signal and waited a moment; before long it opened, and a figure appeared. Brown hair a touch too long, spilling down to her shoulders. A woman with amber eyes tinged with gold.
"Ah, General-in-Chief. What brings you here at this hour?"
Zhang Jue looked at me and smiled, soft as lamplight.
Zhang Jue, having shown me inside, asked my indulgence — she had some task to attend to, and could I wait a short while? I was the one who had turned up without notice and caused the bother, so I nodded without complaint.
Sitting idle held little appeal, so I settled into a convenient spot and watched her work for a time. With a lamp for company, Zhang Jue pounded something herb-like in a bowl set on the table. Even at a glance, it looked like the making of medicine.
I don't know whether I've mentioned this before, but the Zhang sisters, even while aiding in the affairs of state, ran the clinic whenever they could carve out a spare hour.
How had Zhang Jue raised the Yellow Turbans, after all? She had treated the people and preached her teachings, built her following on that goodwill, and only then raised her revolt. Given the records of her skill in medicine and her care for the sick, she had likely treated them without taking a single coin, like some work of charity.
The Zhang Jue of Romance of the Three Kingdoms goes a step further still — summoning wind and rain, chanting incantations like a true sorceress. To think that this Zhang Jue stood here in the flesh; the feeling was a strange one indeed.
Once, a question had occurred to me, and I had put it to her.
"I've been curious about something. May I ask you just one thing?"
"Of course. Ask away."
"Could you call up a southeast wind? Something like that?"
"...I beg your pardon?"
The dumbfounded look on Zhang Jue's face at my out-of-nowhere question was, even in memory, a fond thing. Bewildered, unable to hide her puzzlement, she had answered me.
"I can't imagine why you'd single out the southeast wind of all things, but to give you an answer..."
"General-in-Chief."
"...?"
I had been wandering through the past when the voice calling me snapped me back to myself. Zhang Jue stood watching me, a smile at the corner of her mouth.
"What has you thinking so intently?"
"Nothing much. Just idle thoughts."
"Is that so?"
She accepted my answer without a trace of suspicion, then asked, "So then, General-in-Chief — what business brings you all this way?"
"Nothing much."
I answered her question. "Do you happen to know a good physician?"
"A physician I know, you say..."
"Yes."
I went on, keeping my expression even. "There's a man I'd like to have repaired."
Of all the countless debts a person can owe, they say a debt of a human life is the most precious of all.
I intended to put that saying into practice — just this once.