A New Life (1)
If you stay faithful to the present, there comes a moment when you lose all track of time without ever noticing it slip away.
You bury yourself in whatever sits right in front of you, then pause for a breather and glance at the calendar—only to gape at it, wondering when on earth the days could have run off like that.
Things were no different for me now.
Since I had marched out last autumn to crush Yuan Shu, the man who dared usurp the imperial title, a truly staggering amount had happened. I had sat down to talks with Cao Cao, who answered my summons, and Seo Yeo—the woman who never drifted so much as a step from my side—had led an army into battle for the first time in her life and blasted the enemy to pieces.
After that, I watched the whole spectacle of Yuan Shu being boiled down into pork, threw my weight behind Zhang Song to swallow Yi Province in a single gulp, and then accepted the surrender of Meng Huo, who ruled over the Nanman.
And yet the biggest event of all was probably none of those.
It was the fact that I had begun taking women into my arms—starting with Seo Yeo.
Seo Yeo, Lü Bu, Diaochan, and on and on....
I had lain with so many women that if anyone called me a lecher, I wouldn't have had a leg to stand on.
So why, you ask, was I suddenly so keenly aware of time passing?
Because of the woman sitting right in front of me: Lü Bu.
Or to be precise, I should say it was Lü Bu's belly—swollen round and full now that the hunt was over.
Lü Bu, who had first given herself to me in late autumn of last year, had succeeded in conceiving my child, and enough time had passed since that she now carried the belly everyone pictures when they hear the word pregnant.
The sight of the woman who once cleared city walls at a single bound sprawled across her seat, moaning about how heavy her body had become, was refreshingly novel.
If it were merely a matter of gained weight, she would have been exercising—but that wasn't the situation she was in. At most, she diligently kept up the stretching routine Hua Tuo had taught her.
"Nom nom nom..."
Lü Bu lay sprawled out in blissful comfort in the same room as me, endlessly popping something into her mouth. She munched with such gusto, cheeks packed round, that a chorus of nom-nom-nom would have been the perfect soundtrack.
The snack she was working through resembled tanghulu, that classic Chinese treat.
Sour hawthorn berries, coated in a thick sauce of melted sugar and left to dry....
...Hold on. This isn't a dish similar to tanghulu. This is just tanghulu, plain and simple.
The reason the dish came into being at all was nothing special. Ever since her pregnancy, Lü Bu's palate had turned upside down and she hunted sweets without pause, so I had wracked my brain over how to satisfy her.
Running my mind at full throttle, I ransacked my past-life memories like a prospector panning a riverbed, and in the end I managed to haul this recipe out of my pitifully small stock of knowledge.
"You wish for me to coat the fruit the people commonly eat in a syrup of boiled sugar, then let it cool, my lord?"
"That's right."
For the record, the one who actually cooked it was Diaochan.
...My own skill at cooking is, well, a touch questionable.
The moment I so much as set foot in the kitchen, the servants throw a fit and shove me straight back out the door—how exactly am I supposed to cook under those conditions? Cooking is honest-to-goodness heavy labor, with every chance of someone getting hurt, so I couldn't even blame them for pushing me away.
If I so much as nicked a finger or scorched a hand, the entire Imperial Palace would turn itself inside out. For a man holding office as high as mine, standing quietly out of the way is the help.
In any case, Diaochan did not betray my expectations. True to her fame as a woman of many talents, she brought the dish off flawlessly.
Honestly, I hadn't expected it to come out this perfect. In theory the syrup is nothing more than boiled-down sugar, but that boiling is precisely what makes the dish so difficult.
Had I attempted it myself, I surely would have ended up with heaps of "syrup" (that had quietly become caramel) and "syrup" (that had hardened into candy).
Hawthorn berries taste tart and sweet, much like an apple—and then you coat them in syrup and let it set? Just imagining it sounds overwhelmingly sweet, doesn't it?
I wouldn't call myself a great lover of sweets, but neither did I loathe sugar so thoroughly that I would deny a treat even to a woman carrying my own child.
"I-it's really sweet..."
The way Lü Bu rolled the bite-sized hawthorn berries around in her cheeks brought a squirrel, or perhaps a hamster, to mind.
...
Unlike Lü Bu, Seo Yeo hadn't really changed despite carrying a child. Alcohol in particular she hadn't spared so much as a glance, even before she was with child. Whenever I held a cup out to her, she would seal her lips shut and duck her head every which way to escape it—and that look of hers was honestly adorable.
Perhaps because of how poorly she had once lived, her palate had no pickiness to it at all. Short of alcohol, she ate whatever she was given, and ate it well.
The one problem was that, outside of mealtimes, she let nothing at all touch her lips. Hers was the very picture of a woman determined to focus on guarding me and nothing else.
Naturally, worry welled up in me, and I held out a treat to Seo Yeo.
"Here. You have one too, Seo Yeo."
"But, my lord..."
At the offered snack, Seo Yeo showed her usual signs of preparing to refuse. Of course, the sight of a wife at full term eating nothing whatsoever in the name of guarding me was not something I wanted.
Let's just see whether you can still turn this down.
"I thought long and hard to come up with this, you know..."
I put on a slightly crestfallen act.
"Fine. If you don't want it, I suppose there's nothing to be done."
"N-no. I will eat it."
True to form for a woman who reacted to my every slightest gesture with hair-trigger sensitivity, Seo Yeo did not stray from my expectations this time either.
I watched her take small, careful bites with a fond smile for a while, then turned my head toward Lü Bu.
"Lü Bu, that's enough eating for now."
"Huh?!"
"You've had far too much."
Sugar does have its merits—it revives the appetite of those who've lost theirs, sharpens the memory, and so forth. But anything in excess will turn on you, and everyone knows that gorging on sugar will wreck a body.
I snatched the plate sitting in front of Lü Bu and spoke in a firm voice.
"That's it for today."
"Uuu... that's so mean..."
Lü Bu deflated on the spot, precisely like a child whose candy had just been confiscated.
I had said it to make her collect herself.
"Weren't you the one saying you'd be a good mother? Then you need to cultivate a little self-restraint too."
"That's true, but..."
Could a child really be raised properly at this rate? I had my doubts. Or was it just my imagination, picturing mother and children someday sneaking snacks together in perfect harmony?
At the thought of having to look after both a child grown in body alone and a genuine child, I pressed a hand to my head.
A woman's pregnancy, they say, lasts about forty weeks.
Forty weeks.
Two hundred and eighty days, counted straight.
Meaning the birth would come somewhere between the ninth and tenth month.
And my instincts told me that time was nearly upon us.
Out of consideration for Seo Yeo and Lü Bu, who grew uneasy the moment I was out of their sight, I kept my outings to a bare minimum and waited for the fated day.
...
Would the child about to be born resemble its father, or its mother?
I could only hope, with all my heart, that the baby would favor its beautiful mother rather than a father as common as the pebbles strewn along the roadside.
To the still-deflated Lü Bu, I gave her cheek a pinch, by way of telling her to perk up.
"Mmmph—brrrbrrb."
Was it because she was so near her term? Even her cheeks had grown plumper and squishier.
In any case, it was a terribly addictive sensation.
Time flowed on, and about a week later, the fated day I had been waiting for finally arrived.
The first to show signs of labor was the first woman I had ever taken to my bed.
"...My lord."
"Hmm?"
"...The baby..."
"Wha—?!"
At those sudden words, I flipped out spectacularly right where I sat. It had to be agony beyond imagining, yet her face merely flushed a touch and she didn't blink so much as once—so utterly like Seo Yeo, I thought.
Having thoroughly lost my composure, I of course called for the physician, and the woman answered my summons without a moment's delay.
"The child is coming, you say?"
"Yes. Please. I'm entrusting this to you."
The woman whom the world hailed as the Divine Physician blinked her mysterious eyes once, then bowed with perfect calm.
"If it is the General-in-Chief who asks... then I will do my utmost."
After that, everything was such a whirl that I could hardly recall how events unfolded. Knowing nothing of medicine, all I could do was sit close by wearing an anxious expression.
"Haaah..."
Lü Bu, who would soon be giving birth the very same way, swallowed hard and watched with a nervous face.
Hua Tuo seemed to have plenty of experience as a midwife as well, and she guided the delivery along with practiced ease.
Seo Yeo's labor did not last long.
One hour.
From the moment she began pushing in earnest, the child arrived within that single hour.
An exceptionally swift delivery, with no complications of any kind.
...
Even Hua Tuo, who had been through every situation imaginable, wore a faintly taken-aback look, as if it had been a long while since her last case like this. Watching her, I let out a breath of relief.
"My lord..."
"Yes. I'm right here."
This was the first time I had ever seen Seo Yeo break into a sweat like this. I clasped the hand of Seo Yeo—her face as expressionless as ever—and gave her a small smile.
Just then, Hua Tuo, who had received the child and was deftly seeing to the aftermath, murmured:
"...It is a daughter."
"A daughter?"
"Yes."
Hua Tuo nestled the tiny newborn—that little warm bundle of blood and life—into Seo Yeo's arms.
"Have you decided upon a name?"
"Ah... a name..."
Truth be told, I had agonized over that very thing. Seo Yeo, like Guan Yu or Cao Cao, had never been one who could name descendants of her own—and yet I could hardly slap a careless, throwaway name on my own child.
Seo Yeo. Her very name meant "to be with one another." It was the name I had given her as a blessing of my own making, for the girl who had lost her parents and been left all alone in the world.
I had ground my brain desperately, desperate to land on the name that felt like the one. If a boy, Seo Mun—Mun for warmth. If a girl....
"...Seo Hui."
Mun for warmth. Hui for joy.
A name bestowed in the hope that each would carry warmth in their heart and know happiness.
Seo Hui sounded for all the world like a name that could broker a diplomatic settlement with the northern tribes, but that Hui—the one meaning "to shine"—was a different character entirely, so let's move along, shall we?
I looked at Seo Yeo and asked,
"What do you think? If it doesn't please you, I'm prepared to choose another..."
"No."
With the baby cradled against her chest, Seo Yeo fixed her gaze on me with eyes that sparkled like starlight.
"I truly... think it is a wonderful name."
"...Then I'm glad."
The sixth year of the Guangxi era.
Early autumn, in the year 195.
Proof that I had existed in this place.
It was the moment my first new life entered the world.