Return (8)
Time had galloped past like a runaway horse since my return to Luoyang, and before I knew it, winter had arrived.
In those few months between autumn's departure and winter's arrival, a great many things had happened.
The first of them... hmm. Someone had received some truly joyous news.
"...You've been suffering frequent bouts of nausea lately?"
"...Yes."
The black-haired woman who had requested an audience with me, citing urgent business, continued in a tone of perfect courtesy.
"There is also the dizziness, and my appetite has changed somewhat... which I cannot help but suspect..."
"I see."
Liu Bei never carried the sentence through to its end, but I understood perfectly well what she was trying to say.
So the stork had finally paid a visit.
I couldn't say whether this counted as historical fidelity, but unlike the countless other women who had spent a night with me, Liu Bei alone had shown no reaction whatsoever.
And that had become a rather fatal weakness of hers.
You could see it plainly in the battles of will between Cao Cao and Liu Bei. Whenever Liu Bei crossed paths with Cao Cao in the street, the two of them would launch into a staring contest as though by prior arrangement.
They had been lifelong rivals in the original history as well, so it was a contest in which neither could be said to hold the upper hand... and yet.
There were times when Liu Bei lost to Cao Cao outright, on the spot.
And when would that be, you ask? You can probably guess.
"Hmm? It seems some woman who can't even manage the basic duties of a wife is glaring at me from somewhere."
"......"
"Tsk, tsk. Presentable enough on the outside, yet hollow to the very core. Truly pitiable..."
Whenever Cao Cao murmured such things with the suddenly grown Cao Ang cradled in her arms, Liu Bei would stop dead in her tracks, smile still fixed upon her face.
"Ugh... I'm scared, Big Sis Yunchang."
"...You smother me. Desist your clinging."
"Blunt as ever, even after bearing a child... Eek!"
The Peach Sisters, ever trailing after Liu Bei, would turn the whole thing into a comedy sketch, and the sight of Liu Bei frozen in place like a stone statue was an awkward one even now that I looked back on it.
Having endured such an age of patience and finally succeeded in conceiving, how elated and overjoyed she must have been.
"Mmm..."
Having finished reminiscing, I looked the woman before me squarely in the eye.
Just look at those eyes sparkling. She seemed to be in an extraordinarily good mood.
Remembering that morning sickness usually sets in around the second or third month of pregnancy, I tapped the desk with my finger and ran the numbers. It was November now, so Liu Bei's due date would be...
Sometime around August or September of next year, give or take.
Picturing her, I asked with a faint smile.
"Have you settled on a name for the child?"
"That is..."
Watching Liu Bei ponder the name in earnest, I found myself thinking.
Would it be Liu Feng, or Liu Shan?
Anticipation and apprehension welled up in me at the same time. Honestly, those two are figures who draw no end of commentary.
Liu Feng bickered back and forth over command authority with Meng Da, that master of betrayal, and in the end left Guan Yu — a warrior worthy of the title Match for Ten Thousand — to die at the Kingdom of Wu's hands.
That the Kingdom of Shu began its collapse from the moment of Guan Yu's death is something everyone who has read Romance of the Three Kingdoms knows.
And Liu Shan... hmm...
His character isn't bad.
I caught myself reaching for the line I typically deploy when complimenting someone and finding nothing else to say.
...No, wait. If anything, in our present circumstances, wouldn't a child like Liu Shan be the better outcome? A temperament content with its proper station and quiet in its corner beats one that nurses half-baked, empty ambitions and goes stirring up trouble.
After all, the very act of naming one's sons that way was itself grounds to conclude that Liu Bei harbored ambition. Combine the names of the two sons — Feng and Shan — and you get Fengshan: the name of the sacred rite performed at Mount Tai, one that only an emperor may offer.
I didn't believe Liu Bei would turn around and club me over the back of the head at this stage, but it pricked at my nerves all the same.
"I intend to name him... Liu Huan."
Watching Liu Bei speak at last, slowly, as though every deliberation were complete, I nodded along.
Huan — the character for 'steadfast.'
At the very least, it seemed free of the problems carried by names like Feng ('to enfeoff') or Shan ('to bequeath a throne'). It was nothing short of a relief that Liu Bei appeared to have shaken off her lingering designs on the throne entirely.
So Liu Bei's pregnancy was the first event — and then there was a second.
"Waaah—!"
"Hehe. Yes, yes. What a spirited little one."
The Emperor had safely brought her child into the world.
I gazed upon Her Majesty, drenched in sweat from head to toe, then quietly let my eyes drift downward. Black hair — the very emblem of the Han imperial bloodline. The newborn had yet to open its eyes even once, but that black pupils lay waiting behind those tiny lids, of that there was no doubt.
Clad in the plainest of attire, Her Majesty cradled the baby, and I posed my question.
"Your Majesty — have you decided upon the child's name?"
"A name?"
Somehow it feels as though I've been asked about names an awful lot lately... must be my imagination.
...No, not my imagination. It really has been that often, hasn't it?
Zhang Fei, Liu Bei, and now Her Majesty as well — that makes three.
By the time I had finished that thought, Her Majesty appeared to have settled the matter.
"Yes. Born in winter — so how does Liu Dong sound?"
"......"
At Her Majesty's suggestion, I held my silence, while the midwife who had assisted at the birth nearby put on a visibly flustered expression.
Liu Dong, is it.
To me — a man who in his past life wandered through every corner of the internet — that word felt oddly familiar.
Why does it sound like the name of a girl who'd be a natural at spinning up sockpuppets and manipulating public opinion?
But setting that aside, I had reasons of my own that left me no choice but to object to Her Majesty's proposal.
"Your Majesty. Have you given thought to the name taboo?"
"...Hmm."
The name taboo.
A custom of the East Asian cultural sphere built upon Chinese characters — put simply, one does not use the characters that appear in the names of one's sovereign or one's ancestors. Because of this, if a monarch goes and helps herself to some everyday character as a name, life becomes enormously inconvenient for everyone beneath her.
If your own name happens to contain a character matching the monarch's, you must change your name; if a word in daily use contains one, that word must henceforth be written differently.
To take the character for 'winter' that Her Majesty had just proposed: words like 'hibernation' or 'overwintering' would all have to be scrapped and replaced outright.
Some might wonder what sort of custom that even is.
But honestly? I think the very same thing.
The character for 'hill' — the Ling in my own name — is also used quite frequently, and it makes me terribly self-conscious. Watching the people whose loyalty to me runs so excessive it borders on the strange deliberately avoid words like 'royal tomb' or 'hill' is, frankly, a burden.
I understand that Confucianism prizes ritual propriety, but isn't this taking things a bit far?
In any case, because of customs like these, those seated in the highest places of power — emperors and kings — often built their names from characters the common people rarely wrote.
The problem was that I could hardly tell which characters those were. What was a man supposed to do — someone who, unable to summon the right word, needed another's help just to draft documents?
And even setting the taboo aside, the name Her Majesty had chosen had problems aplenty of its own. Born in winter, so let us put 'winter' in the child's name...
I suppose you could call that thinking on a grand scale, if you liked — but there was a point that needed addressing first. Unable to tell Her Majesty to her face that her taste in names was hopelessly rustic, I wrung my brain dry and answered.
"Your Majesty. Does the Book of Rites not record the cautions one must observe when naming a child?"
"In naming a child, use not the name of the state,
use not the names of the sun and the moon,
use not the name of a hidden ailment,
and use not the names of mountains and rivers."
A child is not to be named after a nation, nor after the sun and moon, nor after an ailment, nor after mountains and rivers.
Mountains and rivers are words for the natural world — which meant the word 'winter' ran afoul of the rule as well.
"If you stretch it that far," one might object, "then Zhang Ha — the name given to Zhang Fei's daughter — violates it too, does it not?" But the character for Ha carries the meaning of 'lotus,' and yet at the same time the meaning of 'to bear upon one's shoulders.' Do you see why, even with the lotus flower in mind, she refused to use the proper character for it?
...Honestly, it's a case of covering one eye and pretending not to see. But then, rules were always meant to be dodged with a little grace.
When I shook my head while citing what was written in the Book of Rites, Her Majesty asked in a puzzled voice.
"Mmm? If that is so, then it would mean your own name is not without its problems either..."
"......"
And there went the character for 'hill,' snagging my ankle yet again.
In all likelihood, my mother — the woman who gave me my name — had no idea any such rule existed. She did hold the lofty post of Governor of Bing Province, but she had climbed there on the strength of exactly one talent: fighting.
I recalled the past and spoke.
"Come to think of it, there was even someone who declared outright that my name itself was ill-omened."
"Mmm?"
At my muttered aside, the Emperor tilted her head slightly.
"I thought I had dealt with every last one of them. There were still more left?"
Huh?
Dealt with... what, exactly?
When I made a thoroughly dopey face, Her Majesty smiled with perfect composure.
"We shall attend to the matter personally. Wait but a little while."
"...There is no need for that, Your Majesty."
"Hehe. Understood."
That is not the face of someone who understands.
I could only stand there bewildered by the sight of Her Majesty — entirely unchanged, even after bringing a child into the world.