The Banquet (4)
The familiar generals at the banquet were not limited to Zhang Liao's party. There were also the commanders of Jing Province who had once served under Liu Biao before surrendering to me — among them Gan Ning and Huang Zhong, famed in the original history by the epithets Pirate of the Silk Sails and Old but Ever-Vigorous.
The few strands of hair sticking up in stubborn spikes were as unruly as ever. By her own account, no matter how carefully she trimmed them, they simply sprang right back up.
"Wow, so this is the Luoyang I've only ever heard about? They've certainly got a lot of expensive-looking things here."
"...Kindly watch your words. Our position here is still... uncertain."
Huang Zhong, whose age was impossible to guess from her face, cautioned Gan Ning, and Gan Ning burst out laughing at the worry threaded through the warning.
"Aw, come on, you think I don't know that much? Quit nagging me."
"..."
"See? I even took my bells off, so nobody could find an excuse to pick a fight with me."
True to her word, the bells that would normally have jingled at Gan Ning's every step were nowhere to be seen.
"Jingling around here all day wouldn't tell anybody what I used to do for a living anyway."
"Phew..."
"There you go sighing again. You know that makes you age faster, right?"
And there it was — she had gone and poked the dragon's sore spot. Isn't it common courtesy never to mention a woman's age or her weight? Gan Ning had just strolled blithely across that line.
Huang Zhong's voice turned faintly frosty.
"My, my. Would you care to measure for yourself whether I have aged or not?"
"Uh... I never said anything of the sort, so let's just calm down."
Perhaps she had already been through the wringer over this once before, because Gan Ning put on a vague expression and edged back a step or two.
"Do you have any idea how startling it is when you go 'training' and just rain arrows at me from clear across the field?"
An arrow that would have drilled through my skull long ago if not for Seo Yeo, come winging out of nowhere... That was a little terrifying, honestly. What was this, a horror movie?
"So that was your grievance."
Huang Zhong tilted her head slightly as she spoke.
"If it pleases you, I would be willing to cross weapons with you at close quarters instead."
"Aw, forget it. What's the point of picking on an old lady?"
"..."
Was this obliviousness, or what? Gan Ning seemed to be speaking in perfect innocence, yet every single line out of her mouth was another poke at Huang Zhong's sore spot.
Bombarded by one age attack after another, Huang Zhong froze solid as a statue, and Gan Ning used the pause to demolish every dish on the table.
I half expected an arrow to end up planted in Gan Ning's backside sooner or later, but the two of them seemed to be getting along in their own way regardless.
Truth be told, I was curious too. Just how old was Huang Zhong—
...
Before I could even finish the thought, Huang Zhong turned her head and looked straight at me.
Had our eyes simply met by chance? Or had some superhuman instinct tipped her off that I was entertaining a thoroughly ill-advised thought? The fact that I couldn't say for certain was frightening in itself.
The moment our gazes met, Huang Zhong bowed with perfect courtesy, but the uneasy feeling refused to fade.
...Then again, in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Huang Zhong would fly into a rage the instant anyone so much as breathed the word old, as if a berserk button had been pressed, so nothing about this was strange. Hadn't Xiahou Yuan, Cao Cao's right hand, once crossed her the wrong way and lost his head for it?
Her end in the Romance was tied to this as well. During the Battle of Yiling, Liu Bei — looking to give Guan Yu's and Zhang Fei's sons their moment to shine — declared:
Something along those lines, anyway.
Old? Useless?
Naturally, Huang Zhong sallied forth as valiantly as she had at Mount Dingjun, took an arrow from an ambush, and died when the wound festered. One lesson to draw from that: never call her old, even as a joke.
This was no laughing matter — Huang Zhong really might die.
Ah, right. In the official histories, she passed away a full year before the Battle of Yiling ever took place.
"H-hey, Jeong Reung!"
...?
Just as I was surveying the generals around me, a voice called out abruptly from nearby, and I turned my head toward it.
"What is it?"
"Wanna come have a drink with me later?!"
Lü Bu's face had flushed scarlet — apparently she had succeeded in coaxing that drink out of Zhang Liao.
Their conversation was already over, then. Zhang Liao, who had been murmuring with her in voices too low for me to catch, was now chatting away innocently with her fellow officers.
I knew exactly what Lü Bu was angling for with this invitation. Just as Zhang Liao had mentioned earlier — she wanted to stage a scene where a man and woman in the prime of their lives let the wine sweep them away.
To her invitation, I answered without a moment's hesitation.
"No."
"...Huh?"
Lü Bu stopped dead in her tracks at my flat refusal. A smile curved the corner of my mouth as I spoke.
"Lü Bu. Come here a moment?"
"Uh, sure? Okay."
At my beckoning gesture, she closed the distance between us, blushing all the while. With the Emperor's warning from earlier still hanging in the air, no one was inclined to eavesdrop on our conversation — but there was no harm in being careful anyway.
I leaned my head toward Lü Bu and, in a whisper too quiet for anyone nearby to hear, explained why I had refused.
"Alcohol is bad for the baby."
"...!"
At my whisper, Lü Bu's eyes went as wide as saucers.
She had dodged the question last time with a vague non-answer, but I had been watching her closely ever since, and by now I was certain. She never actually retched, yet she was oddly devouring foods she had never spared a glance for before — fruit, say, or honeyed water. The way she kept picking out the sweetest things on the table had struck me as curious. I'd heard that some women's tastes flip completely overnight once they conceive, so perhaps Lü Bu had fallen pregnant around the same time as Seo Yeo.
"...Really?"
"Really."
"Th-then what am I supposed to do?"
Lü Bu asked, her eyes trembling. I answered with a smile.
"What do you mean, what? You quit drinking. That's what."
"Nooo..."
Her face crumpled as though the sky itself had fallen. I patted her on the shoulder.
"You said you'd glue yourself to my side from now on and guard me, remember?"
"..."
"And I'll stay by your side and make sure you don't eat anything strange."
"Y-yeah."
Lü Bu nodded, her face burning red. ...She didn't look the least bit unhappy about it, though?
"By your side... watching me."
Ah. So that was it. Could the promise of staying beside her really make her that happy?
While Lü Bu repeated my words to herself and grinned like a fool, a familiar voice drifted over from nearby.
"...Alcohol is bad for the baby, you say?"
"Your Majesty?"
"That was a near disaster indeed."
Her Majesty, who had been on the very point of raising a cup, set it back down and issued orders to the palace maids in attendance.
"Fetch food that is good for the child. None of this."
"A-as You command."
Liquor deemed worthy of the imperial table was surely the finest in the land, yet she dismissed it as "this" without a flicker of hesitation. Was this the power of a mother's love?
The palace maids, practiced hands all, returned with drinks to wet the throat and even clean water besides.
"Hmm. This much may suffice."
Having swept her gaze over the table once, the Emperor turned to me.
"Hwahyeon. Is there aught else We must take care over?"
...
I was no physician — how would I know the details? All I had to rely on was a modern memory: forgo alcohol and tobacco, and you have already secured half your health.
"...I believe it would be enough simply not to be a picky eater."
After racking my brain for something useful, that was the best I could produce — a thoroughly obvious answer. ...I would have to ask Hua Tuo properly, sooner or later.
"Not being a picky eater..."
"What, that's not hard at all."
I will simply look past the fact that Seo Yeo and Lü Bu, standing nearby, each reacted as though they had just been handed some earth-shattering secret of the universe.
In a corner of the hall where the banquet was in full swing, a brown-haired woman who had, by her own choice, claimed an inconspicuous seat was studying the tabletop with great attention.
"Hmm... now then, today..."
A fortune-stick tube and divination sticks. A traditional method of reading good and ill fortune: a number of wooden sticks kept inside a tube carved with the Eight Trigrams. Done properly, one chants an incantation and shakes the tube until a stick works its way out through the gap — but that would have drawn every eye in the room and made a dreadful racket, so she had resolved to restrain herself. After all, this was, strictly speaking, divination purely for fun.
"...Ah. This one."
Just as the woman, who had been studying the tube for some time, reached in to draw out a single stick, someone spoke to her.
"You look quite at your leisure."
Even at first hearing, the voice carried an unmistakable air of mystery. The woman smiled.
"It has been a while. How many years has it been, I wonder?"
"Aigoo, and you can't even remember that much..."
Clicking his tongue, an old man as shabby as he was out of place at a banquet plopped himself down in front of her.
The strangest part of it all was that not a single soul nearby spared so much as a glance for the old man who fit the festivities so poorly. He limped on one leg, his white hair had grown out into a wild thicket, and his left eye stared off unfocused, as though blind. Yet the woman smiled on, calm and untroubled, as though such a sight were an old friend to her.