Jing Province Magnate (2)
Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi kept up their silent war of wills even as they threw themselves into the bamboo slips in dead earnest.
And what sort of people were these two? Even in the true course of history, they were talents whose names rang out across the political arena, built on accomplishment after accomplishment. Zhuge Liang scarcely needs an introduction—serving as chancellor of Shu, he shouldered every branch of domestic administration and all but carried the state alone. Sima Yi never occupied the chancellor's seat, it is true, yet she distinguished herself in development works and above all in personnel, the art of seeking out and elevating talent.
Deng Ai, the Mountaineering King, owed her rise to a personal recommendation from Sima Yi. Back then Deng Ai stammered badly and hailed from humble stock, a mere junior clerk, but Sima Yi paid no heed to any of it and promoted her on ability alone. By the standards of that age, it was startlingly radical treatment.
Now, on top of everything else, children who might as well have been administrative machines were pitted against each other in competition—and the speed of their work became downright terrifying.
"So this is how it's done, right?"
"…Hold on, this calculation is wrong?"
"Huh? Really?!"
It was a gulf of heaven and earth from Lü Bu, who had spent an eternity clutching a single document only to get even that one wrong. Still, watching her grind through it with groans and sighs, simply because I had asked, was oddly endearing.
"…"
Seo Yeo, meanwhile, kept an almost eerie silence, her eyes boring into the words inscribed on her bamboo slip. She looked to be calculating with all her might, yet somehow could not push a single step past where she stood. Keep that up, and the slip was going to sprout a hole.
And through it all, the output of Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi never once slowed. Every time my attention drifted for even a moment, another slip would quietly mount itself beside those two. It was a sight to behold.
They're over there filming an epic blockbuster, and we're over here shooting a sitcom.
…Is this really how it should be?
In that fashion, time flowed on, and the two of them polished off every last bamboo slip they had brought for the day. I had managed barely a handful of my own. Truly staggering.
"…Hmm."
Having confirmed there was no more work to claim, Sima Yi plucked a slip from the pile stacked beside Zhuge Liang without so much as a by-your-leave.
"And here I'd taken you for the sort who'd do nothing but wag her tongue all day until she invited ruin upon her own head…"
So spoke Sima Yi as she skimmed the slips Zhuge Liang had processed.
"Still, I suppose there was a reason you were so sure of yourself, hm?"
When Sima Yi offered a response that needled even while grudgingly conceding, Zhuge Liang returned it in precisely the same coin.
"I was surprised as well."
"…"
"For all the savagery of your speech, you do handle the work with surprising thoroughness."
Neither of them, it seemed, had any intention of yielding so much as a single syllable. Children at heart, the pair of them.
I exhaled a silent sigh and gave each of their heads a light rap with my knuckles.
"Ah!"
"Ow!"
Freshly bonked on the head by me, the two looked toward each other, stopped mid-glare, and traded matching looks of bewilderment.
So that was a voice Zhuge Liang could make. Was this what Zhuge Jin had described—her sister's ordinary, everyday self?
I spoke up.
"Enough fighting. Try getting along."
"…"
At my words, Zhuge Liang, after a brief silence, was the first to answer, folding into a respectful bow.
"We have shown the General-in-Chief a disgraceful display. I have no face to raise before you."
"…You're right on every count. We were an unseemly sight, weren't we?"
I couldn't begin to guess what had passed through them, but Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi both proved remarkably willing to own their faults.
"Very well. I shall conduct myself with due restraint from here on, so let us treat each other kindly."
"And I likewise—I am in your care."
Sima Yi spoke while shooting Zhuge Liang a sidelong glance, and Zhuge Liang answered that remark in a calm, level voice.
What on earth was this?
The attitude of two girls who had been growling like they'd devour each other on the spot had turned over in an instant.
While I stood there wearing a hopelessly bemused expression, Sima Yi said:
"For now, I've gathered the strange ledgers over there. We can go through them tomorrow."
"All right."
"Then I'll be off—it's nearly dark."
With that, Sima Yi clicked briskly across the room and was the first to withdraw.
…Did she wear herself out working too hard? I ought to trim her share a little tomorrow.
Scarcely had Sima Yi taken her leave when Zhuge Liang opened her mouth in turn.
"What will you do now, General-in-Chief?"
"Hm?"
"If it is your wish, I can remain here and assist you further with the work, though…"
She had already chewed through that mountain of work, and she could still do more? Zhuge Liang was, in fact, a robot.
"No. The rest can wait until tomorrow."
I shook my head at her question.
"Did I not tell you before? All I ask of you is that you grow up healthy."
As though my answer were the one she had predicted all along, Zhuge Liang smiled.
"Then I shall gladly obey."
"Good."
I watched Zhuge Liang withdraw, then turned my head to take stock of the room.
"So then… if I add this to that… hmmmm…"
Lü Bu was still grappling with the very spot I had just declared wrong.
"…"
Seo Yeo, for her part, remained exactly as before, clutching her slip and staring at what was written there.
…Her persistence alone was world-class. How could someone try that hard and still come up short? Was this, too, a gap in talent?
If left alone, the pair looked ready to work straight through the night, so I called it.
"That's enough for today. Let's head back."
"I was wondering when you'd finally say that!"
As if she had been waiting for exactly those words, Lü Bu flung the slip in her hand behind her with a flourish.
"…Yes."
Seo Yeo calmly squared her slips away in order. They were built much alike, those two—but in that moment, the difference in their temperaments could not have been plainer.
Having paid her parting respects to the General-in-Chief and stepped out of the room, Zhuge Liang stopped dead in her tracks. A girl stood before her.
A black hairband, striking for the ribbons that trailed down either side of her head. A girl dressed in clothes of nearly the same shade waited with her arms crossed.
"Is something the matter?"
With the General-in-Chief nowhere in the vicinity, Zhuge Liang addressed the girl in a markedly looser register. The girl, long since familiar with this habit of hers, showed hardly a flicker of surprise.
"The way your speech flips on a whim depending on who's standing nearby—truthfully, it amazes me every time I see it."
She tossed the words off in a light murmur, a small needle slipped inside.
Zhuge Liang looked at the girl with the violet hair—Sima Yi—and asked:
"My, could you be picking another quarrel?"
"Why would I bother with something so utterly profitless?"
Sima Yi had no appetite for burning the night away in vanity duels that nourished no one. It was nothing but her own hunch, yet she sensed instinctively that the moment she squared off in earnest against that little brat, the fatigue would be crushing.
Every clash they'd had until now had been no more than an attempt to sound out the other's caliber. It was the sort of truth that would have laid the General-in-Chief out flat on the spot, had he ever heard of it.
"I have just one proposal."
Sima Yi fixed Zhuge Liang with a sharp, sidelong gaze.
"Let us not quarrel in front of the General-in-Chief any longer. As a rule, at least."
Before Zhuge Liang could react, Sima Yi pressed straight on.
"Well—I can tell well enough from how you behaved just now, but I'm saying it regardless, just in case."
"…"
"What if we claw at each other over nothing and both end up in his bad graces?"
The General-in-Chief was hardly the man for it—but from where these two girls stood, still unable to fathom why he wrapped them in such favor, there was nothing to do but prepare for the worst as well.
Sima Yi hooked one corner of her mouth upward and smiled like a small devil.
"A proposal with nothing to lose for either of us. Surely you won't refuse?"
Her arithmetic was simple: Zhuge Liang, too, would hardly welcome the prospect of forfeiting the General-in-Chief's trust and finding herself with nothing left to lean on. And that arithmetic proved exact.
"This is the first time we have ever been of one mind."
Lips half-hidden behind her White Feather Fan, Zhuge Liang smiled sweetly. At that insufferably smug expression, a mutter slipped out of Sima Yi unbidden.
"Insidious to the bone, honestly."
"And whatever might you mean by that, all of a sudden?"
"Hmph."
Watching her jab deflected without so much as a wobble, Sima Yi snorted. Zhuge Liang spoke to that receding back.
"Shall we get along nicely from here on?"
"…"
Sima Yi paused for a beat, offered no answer whatsoever, and set her feet moving again. Once she had melted from sight, Zhuge Liang let out a long sigh.
"Do you think I choose such stiff speech because I enjoy it?"
An exasperating woman who treated her like a toddler over a bare two years' seniority. She would fling accusations of insidiousness around at the slightest provocation—Zhuge Liang found it all deeply unjust. She, too, wished she could act easy and familiar with the General-in-Chief, and yet…
"…What am I to do, when the moment I stand before him, my whole body goes taut?"
Born to a gentry house on the frontier, orphaned of both parents before she could remember. She had heard that an uncle had once intended to come and take the siblings in—but having read a naked hunger for power in the man's eyes, Zhuge Liang had found him distasteful from the start.
The people around them, for their part, had whispered and pointed at the Zhuge sisters behind their hands. Parentless orphans, they said. On that single account alone, a child was laid bare to every species of malice.
It was back when Father had only just passed. Before departing for Luoyang, her elder sister Jin had sat her down and given her this warning:
"My little sister is simply adorable, you see, so strange people might come creeping up with the worst intentions!"
"…"
"So you be sure to keep your guard up whenever anyone you don't know comes near! Got it?"
"Yes."
The picture of a girl fresh into her thirteenth year lecturing a child of six was, even now, a rather merry one to recall.
Then there were the pint-sized scions of other gentry houses, forever picking fights with her under the banner of their shared standing—humoring them had worn thin. So Zhuge Liang shut herself in her room and did nothing but study. Repeated often enough, it hardened into habit, and the habit, truth be told, was pleasant in its own way.
And into the middle of all that, the General-in-Chief's summons had come, wholly without warning.
And for some reason—why, she could not begin to say—
"Inviting the Zhuge family was not a mistaken choice."
"I believe that one day, like Guanzhong and Yue Yi of old, you will raise this land to greatness."
"All I ask of you is that you grow up healthy."
The General-in-Chief had extended toward her a kindness she could not begin to explain. Whatever purpose lay behind his approach to the Zhuge family, she could be certain of at least one thing—it was nothing ill. With the brilliance of the mind she had been given, Zhuge Liang could see it plainly: this was a man more than worthy of her unreserved loyalty.
…And yet why it was that her nerves pulled taut the instant she stood before him—that, she still could not say.