Fledgling Phoenix (5)
While I was still breaking out in a cold sweat over the future that awaited me, the door swung open.
Every gaze in the room turned as one toward it — and there, standing tall and erect, was an elderly man well advanced in years.
So that's what a man looks like when he ages with dignity.
He had the face of a gentleman one could call handsome without a shred of flattery, and with a single keen, intelligent sweep of his eyes he took the measure of the room.
Beside him, just as Diaochan had promised, stood one more figure.
"..."
The eyes of the girl half-hidden behind the old man darted back and forth without rest, as though she feared something.
One look was all I needed.
That child is timid beyond belief.
Having finished his brief survey, the old man strode forward at once, and the girl scurried after him, sticking close as if terrified of being left behind.
He came to where I sat and offered a bow.
"I pay my respects to the General-in-Chief."
"Th-this girl pays her respects to the General-in-Chief!"
The old man's grave composure and the girl's trembling nerves wove together into a strange harmony, and the result was downright delightful.
I couldn't say whether it was deliberate, but as first impressions went, it wasn't a bad one.
I nodded to the two bowed figures. "You may rise."
"Thank you."
At my leave, the old man straightened himself slowly,
"Th-thank you!"
while the girl, stammering still, snapped upright like a wind-up toy.
She really was nervous.
"...Hmph."
Sima Yi, who had been watching from nearby, wrinkled her nose ever so slightly.
"Forgive her. She is still a child, it seems, and prone to any number of missteps."
The old man bowed once more as he spoke.
I brushed it off. "It's nothing. To err is human."
"We are grateful for the General-in-Chief's generosity."
The girl — who had gathered from the reactions around her that she had blundered — went white as a sheet.
Adorable.
When I committed my own breaches of etiquette, had Her Majesty the Empress looked at me with exactly this expression?
Come to think of it, I was beginning to understand why she always gazed at me as though I were something cute....
The girl raised her head, and I was able to study her features at close quarters.
Her green eyes — even now flinching this way and that, forever gauging the mood around her — seemed to hold all the fresh verdure of a forest in spring. A color so cool and clear that it refreshed even the one doing the looking was a rare sight indeed.
Striking as her eyes were, what drew the gaze even more was her hair. What, exactly, was one supposed to call that color? The honest answer: several colors at once. The ends of her hair, which hung all the way down to brush the floor, were a vivid vermilion; midway up they gave way to a pale teal-green; and by the time they climbed back to her nape, they had turned vermilion once more.
Well, there's a hair color you don't see every day. Can a person even be born with that naturally?
"Uuu...."
Her face — framed by that calf-length hair, gathered into two low tails near the nape — flushed red as a boiled beet.
Apparently I had been staring far too long.
For a timid soul, having a stranger drill holes into her with his eyes was mortifying by definition.
I owned up to it. "My apologies. That was rude of me."
"I-it's fiiine...."
The moment I stopped staring, the relief that washed over her expression was plain to see.
I turned back to the old man. "You are Bang Deok-gong, I take it — the man whose name rings loudest in Jing Province?"
"I am. Though I hear a reputation far grander than I deserve."
The old man — Bang Deok-gong — answered my question with becoming humility.
"That you would answer my summons is a joy to me."
"The honor is entirely mine."
Having welcomed Bang Deok-gong, I put to him a question that had been gnawing at me.
"I hear you have no wish to take office. Is that true?"
"It is."
Bang Deok-gong replied without a flicker of hesitation.
"I wish for nothing more than to spend my remaining years in a quiet corner of the land, farming in peace."
"Hmm...."
A homebody to the core.
Then again, in the original history, Bang Deok-gong vanishes from the record entirely after the final mention of him — living out his days climbing mountains at his wife's side to gather medicinal herbs. He was a man celebrated by all who knew him for his virtue, and blessed with a peerless eye for talent — the man said to have been first to recognize Zhuge Liang and Pang Tong. The famous epithets 'Sleeping Dragon' and 'Fledgling Phoenix' were his coinage as well. Even Sima Hui's own sobriquet, 'Water Mirror,' came from this man's lips.
I put on my most troubled face. "Well, now... that presents a difficulty. I summoned you precisely because I wished to make great use of you."
At that, Bang Deok-gong spoke up as though he had been waiting for exactly that cue.
"Anticipating you would say as much, I have brought a talent with me."
Excellent. He took the bait.
I asked, letting every ounce of anticipation show. "A talent, you say?"
"Indeed."
Bang Deok-gong gave the girl at his side a couple of hearty pats on the back.
"Come, step forward."
"U-uh?!"
Shoved out in front, the girl wore an expression of unmitigated panic. She shot her uncle a look that plainly said they had never discussed any such thing, but he only grinned back at her.
...I can't shake the feeling that I'm watching a man sacrifice an acquaintance on the altar of his own freedom. Grim.
While the girl blinked, still struggling to grasp what was happening, Bang Deok-gong continued.
"This is my niece, Pang Tong."
The moment that name — the very one I had been hoping for — left his lips, a fanfare blared inside my chest.
"Pang Tong, you say?"
I kept my voice perfectly level, betraying nothing on the surface.
"Yes. And I venture this with full confidence: if you make great use of this child, she will prove an immense aid to your grand enterprise."
"U-Uncle?!"
Pang Tong jolted as though she might leap clean out of her skin.
Oblivious or indifferent, Bang Deok-gong pressed on.
"Fledgling Phoenix."
"..."
"That is what I call her."
A faint smile crossed my lips. "A fledgling phoenix... now that is a tremendous name."
"And she is a talent worthy of it."
Having said his piece, Bang Deok-gong withdrew a step.
"It goes without saying, of course, that the judgment is yours alone, General-in-Chief."
"..."
"Will you take this child into your service?"
At his question, I turned my gaze back to Pang Tong.
"U-uuuh... I'm really not the sort of person who deserves that kind of praise...."
Such bottomless lack of confidence.
Trembling from head to toe, Pang Tong finally could bear the suspense no longer and screwed her eyes shut.
There had to be a reason she had grown into such a timid creature.
If memory served, Pang Tong had never been one to show promise in her youth. Her nature was said to be honest to a fault and slow of wit, acknowledged by no one — and the only two souls who ever saw her true worth were her uncle Bang Deok-gong and Sima Hui, the master they called Water Mirror. She did not even meet Sima Hui until she was twenty. Which is to say, up until now Pang Tong had lived a life of being sneered at by everyone around her, with nothing to lean on but her uncle. Recognizing her worth today would take discernment as exceptional as those two men's — nothing less would do.
Had I stood in that room without my knowledge of the future, how would I have treated Pang Tong just now? Would I have brushed this girl aside like every ordinary soul before me?
Well. That was never going to happen.
"They say that when a phoenix appears in the world, men hail it as an omen that peace is coming."
"...?"
Pang Tong, who had been waiting with eyes screwed shut for the insults to fall, opened them in bewilderment.
"The world is in chaos as we speak. So if a fledgling phoenix has shown herself now — does that not mean peace will arrive before long?"
"..."
Catching my meaning, the girl slowly opened her eyes wide.
Smiling, I laid a hand on her shoulder.
"You will become a true phoenix one day, and soar the heavens wing to wing with the dragon."
"...Truly?"
"Truly."
At that, tears began welling up in the corners of Pang Tong's eyes without the slightest warning.
Those great, bead-sized drops caught me off guard, but I could guess why she was showing me this, so I simply waited in silence for her to speak.
"Th-thank you...."
Her voice of thanks kept catching in her throat, over and over.
"I don't understand why Uncle thinks so highly of me — or why you do, General-in-Chief — but...."
Tears streaming down her face, the girl broke into a wide, beaming smile.
"At the very least... it isn't anything unpleasant to hear...."
Just how deep must her heartache have run, to bring her to this?
After laughing and weeping for a spell, she scrubbed her eyes dry with her own forearm and declared, full of vigor:
"All right! I swear I will live up to every last one of your expectations!"
"Good."
Try as I might, I could not have called the Pang Tong before me ugly even as a lie.
...Well, the whole 'Pang Tong is homely' business was the Romance's invention anyway, so it figures.
Somehow this world seems to labor under the unshakable conviction that, where appearances are concerned, everyone simply must be beautiful and magnificent. Truly a splendid world.
"...It seems to have grown again."
Just then Zhuge Liang — who had been observing Pang Tong the whole while, the White Feather Fan raised to her lips — let the mutter slip out.
It was a remark that needled me considerably, but I deliberately played the deaf man.
I heard nothing. Nothing at all.