Fledgling Phoenix (2)
Bang Deok-gong — a celebrated scholar whose name was known to anyone who was anyone in Jing Province.
Liu Biao was no exception. Time and again he had tried to summon the man to his side, and time and again Bang Deok-gong had turned the invitations away flat.
At length, Liu Biao came in person to the fields where Bang Deok-gong was plowing and put a single question to him.
Perhaps the string of refusals had finally gotten under his skin — there was a faint edge of feeling in Liu Biao's voice as he asked.
Confronted with a man who could say such a thing and then calmly return to his plowing, Liu Biao could only heave a sigh and withdraw.
Every scholar of this age lived by the ideal of establishing himself in office and making his name resound through the realm. Among such men, Bang Deok-gong alone was a creature apart.
And yet even a man of so singular a temperament could not brush aside the Grand General who, his place secured in Sili Province, had asked him to come and lend him his aid.
"Th-that is... why ever would that be...?" asked the little girl who had been trotting along at Bang Deok-gong's heels.
"If you refused the Grand General's offer, just as you once refused Liu Jingsheng..."
"No, child."
So Bang Deok-gong addressed his niece, who gazed up at him with green eyes.
Her hair spilled down to her calves, gathered near the nape into two long tails that swayed with her steps. Every color in it gleamed in turn — vermilion orange melting into pale teal and back again — each strand showing off a charm of its own, until to look at her was like glimpsing a phoenix at rest.
"The Grand General is... how shall I put it — a rather troublesome man to refuse."
"Troublesome...?"
With a wry smile, Bang Deok-gong looked down at the girl.
"By what standard he judges, I cannot say. But it is said that once a talent catches his eye, he will call upon them again and again until they enter his service."
The Sima clan of Henei Commandery, dwelling in Sili Province, was the prime example.
Sima Fang himself had been unable to take office, burdened with the care of his young children — yet his second child, the story went, had at last raised the white flag before the Grand General's repeated visits. And the Grand General's eye had proven exactly right: that child now shouldered the weighty affairs of state with remarkable ability.
What, then, if he refused the summons of a man who showed such judgment?
Xuzhou and Yangzhou — Gangdong, the lands south of the Yangtze — lay far enough away, and under enough threat from rival powers, that the Grand General could hardly come calling in person. But Xiangyang in Jing Province, where Bang Deok-gong made his home, sat very close to Sili.
Besides, even Liu Biao, who had ruled Jing Province, had gone down before the Grand General. With nothing left to hold him back, the man would surely come to his family's gate.
Yes — and keep coming, until they accepted his offer of office.
Seen one way, it amounted to a threat of another flavor entirely.
Even if the Grand General himself thought nothing of a refusal, those around him would be far less likely to let it pass. In their eyes, a mere provincial magnate ordering his lord about — come hither, go hence — could hardly expect to be viewed with kindness.
The Sima clan, ranked among the foremost families even in Sili, where the capital Luoyang stood, had been spared the worst of such side effects.
But what of his own house?
Famous though it was, it remained, in the end, one family of provincial gentry among many. If even the Sima clan had been briefly caught up in gossip, there was no reason to invite scandal of his own accord.
In short — for his own sake, and for the sake of whatever blood of his might one day rise to office, it was better to accept the Grand General's offer.
Some would call the Sima case exceptional, a curiosity the Grand General had indulged with visit after visit. But Bang Deok-gong found himself strangely certain that his own family would be counted among those exceptions.
And if so — what reason could the Grand General have to go to such lengths?
"...As expected of you, Uncle. You truly are remarkable..."
"Hm? What is that supposed to mean?"
At this unprompted praise, Bang Deok-gong voiced his puzzlement, and his niece smiled faintly, without strength.
"If there is anyone here the Grand General would mark, it is you, Uncle. You alone."
"..."
"Someone as dull-witted as I has no choice but to lean on another, after all..."
"...Heh."
Watching his niece slip once more into that self-effacing posture, Bang Deok-gong let out a long sigh.
"How many times have I told you not to speak that way?"
"Th-that is..."
The girl faltered under the rebuke.
Timid in all things and slow to learn her letters, she had been dismissed by everyone around her — and yet he could see what time would bring. Given the years, this girl would spread her wings wide as a phoenix and soar.
"Have confidence in yourself. You are capable of becoming a figure so great that no one will have a word to say against you."
"...I hardly think so."
"Hahaha. Do you doubt my eye, then?"
Bang Deok-gong laughed heartily and pressed straight on.
"The truth is, I have been turning one question over since some time ago. What did the Grand General see in us, I wonder, that moved him to send his invitation?"
"Why, obviously it was you he saw, Uncle—"
"No. You are wrong."
Bang Deok-gong dismissed the notion at once.
"Talents of my own modest caliber are scattered thick as grass across the realm."
"..."
"But here, before me, stands a talent capable of setting the whole world to rights."
And with that, he named the epithet he had bestowed upon his niece.
"Fengchu."
A word that meant a fledgling phoenix.
His niece started violently at the word, but he went on regardless.
"The talent the Grand General desires is not me. It is you."
The girl held her silence for a long moment before she finally spoke.
"...I still do not understand why you rate me so highly, Uncle..."
"Because my eye has never once been wrong."
Even when the members of the household looked at the girl and called her slow, Bang Deok-gong had prized her — had gone so far as to hang upon her the name Fengchu, the young phoenix.
For a famous scholar of his standing to pronounce so extravagant a judgment was exceedingly rare, and the girl so honored showed a dullness quite unbecoming of it — so their acquaintances doubted all the more. Some reproached Bang Deok-gong, saying he was merely shielding his own flesh and blood, but he was not a man so soft as to be shaken by that.
"Then shall we make a little wager of it?"
"...A wager?"
"Just so."
At his niece's reaction, Bang Deok-gong nodded.
"Whether the Grand General will hold you dear — or pass over you as lightly as all the others do."
"...You would surely win, Uncle?"
"Tut. How dare you judge a contest before it has even begun?"
A smile played at the corners of Bang Deok-gong's mouth.
"I will stake half a year of your allowance that the Grand General holds you dear."
"Th-that much?!"
Was she to call that generous?
Or was she to take it as proof of just how confident he was?
"But should you lose, there will be no allowance at all for the next half year."
"?!"
Bang Deok-gong's niece — Pang Tong — was plunged at once into an agony of indecision.
If she won the wager, the books she had been eyeing would soon be hers, and whenever a delicious smell drifted down some street, she could buy and eat her fill.
But if she lost?
Every plan she had just dreamed up would dissolve into nothing — and for half a year in Luoyang, the capital of the Han, she would be able to enjoy nothing whatsoever.
However well she hid it, Pang Tong had been quietly aglow at the thought of sampling the capital's sights and delights.
"Uuuu..."
Earnest as the worry was to her, to any other eye it was the picture of ingenuous fretting, and Bang Deok-gong smiled fondly.
Then he prodded her, just a little.
"What is the matter? Did I not just say you would lose?"
"...!"
"Ah, well. It cannot be helped. Then let us speak of this no further—"
At that provocation, Pang Tong, who had been sunk in her agonizing, straightened at once with the air of one resolved.
"F-fine! I accept! You will regret it!"
"That will not happen, so rest easy."
Yes.
A competitive spirit like this would become the very bedrock of her growth.
Bang Deok-gong nodded in satisfaction.
"You must soon stand before the Grand General. Prepare yourself."
"..."
The girl made no answer; she only composed herself — though on closer look, her lips kept moving, ceaselessly murmuring something under her breath.
Uncle was only trying to frighten me, surely... And there is no reason the Grand General would ever think highly of the likes of me...
At the girl's unconfident muttering, Bang Deok-gong sighed within.
Hoping, all the while, that the Grand General's eye was truly as keen as the rumors made it out to be.