An Unexpected Visit (2)
I was, at this very moment, flustered. Truly, genuinely, thoroughly flustered.
No matter how many times I turned it over in my head, the picture refused to change: the three sisters of the Oath of the Peach Garden had let themselves be captured by me on purpose. The women standing before my eyes were not the sort to be taken this easily. The so-called Peach Garden trio had, back in the days when they were scraping along the very bottom, survived so improbably that you would swear heaven itself was lending a hand — and they had gone on surviving and surviving until they founded a nation of their own and climbed, at the bitter end, all the way to the imperial throne. In the original history, without Liu Bei, forget the Three Kingdoms entirely: Cao Cao would have unified the realm ages ago.
"What exactly are you after?" I did my best to smother my flustered heart and spoke up. "You had to have known that coming here meant walking straight into my hands."
It was genuinely baffling. It wasn't as though I could read Liu Bei's mind.
Then Liu Bei, who had been watching me all the while, spoke. "If I told you we came in because we were curious what sort of person the General-in-Chief is — would you believe me?"
…I couldn't.
Liu Bei kept her smile in place as she went on. "After all, there is still the matter of what we did to you."
Was she talking about the Battle of Hulao Pass? It had certainly been a dangerous moment for Lü Bu — one misstep from disaster. Lü Bu herself insisted that even without Seo Yeo there she could have fought her way out alone, but no one can say how a battlefield will turn.
"To my eyes, it looked like a near thing even with Yide and Yunchang rushing you together."
At that, Zhang Fei and Guan Yu, unable to deny it, offered no rebuttal whatsoever. The two of them had fought her side by side and still drawn blood from Lü Bu's counterattack; it seemed that even by their own reckoning, it had been a desperately close call.
"I thought that if we didn't do it this way, there was no telling when we would ever get to sit face to face and speak with you…"
…
"So I came to find you myself, like this."
Her head could have left her shoulders at my merest word, and still Liu Bei stood there, chin high and perfectly composed. Looking at her, I threw out a question.
"And what exactly were you counting on?"
"That even if you captured us, you would not kill us?"
What the— how did she figure that out too?
Liu Bei had been hostile toward me once, it was true, but it was a situation in which she could hardly have helped herself. Gongsun Zan — someone she was on fairly good terms with — had swaggered up to Lü Bu in full bluster, picked a fight, and come within a hair of dying. How was anyone supposed to pretend not to know that?
And then Zhang Fei, the very woman who had saved Gongsun Zan, crossed weapons with Lü Bu in turn and nearly died the same way? Unable to watch any longer, Guan Yu had joined the fray, and even with two of them at it, one hair-raising moment had followed another — so of course Liu Bei stepped in as well.
"After all, had you truly made up your mind to kill us, you could have done it back then."
With those words, Liu Bei's gaze turned to Seo Yeo, standing silent behind me. "That is why I have come to see you, General — before things sour any further, before we cross a river there is no coming back from."
"Hmm…"
It was true that I had given her room enough to make that judgment. But roughly suspecting something and being certain enough of it to stake action on it are two very different matters — all the more so when your own neck is what's on the line.
"And if I change my mind right now and decide to kill you? What then?"
"Uh… in that case…"
Liu Bei answered, sounding faintly sheepish. "I suppose my luck simply runs out there, doesn't it?"
"Sister Xuande?!"
At Liu Bei's declaration — that she had simply acted without a thought for what came after — Zhang Fei reacted with a voice closer to a shriek than a shout. Guan Yu, too, went wide-eyed in open shock, staring toward the room where Liu Bei stood.
"N-no… I mean, I told you, didn't I? That I would go alone…"
Stung by her sisters' reaction, Liu Bei murmured the words in a small voice, half excuse and half apology — and they only inflamed Guan Yu and Zhang Fei further.
"You didn't even explain anything, you didn't convince us of a thing — how were we supposed to just send you off alone somewhere dangerous!"
"Yide speaks truly. What manner of younger sister would I be, to let Lady Xuande walk into peril unaccompanied?"
Zhang Fei hollered at the top of her lungs, and Guan Yu nodded along in firm agreement.
"No wonder you kept trailing off and hemming and hawing — it felt off the whole time! You just charged in with no plan whatsoever!"
"On this occasion, Lady Xuande, your thinking was short indeed."
"I-I'm sorry…"
As the two of them kept piling on, Liu Bei pulled a helpless face and apologized to them both. Even Liu Bei, it seemed, could not withstand a sustained barrage of cold, hard facts from her own sisters.
The moment the apology left her mouth, Zhang Fei — who had been driving those facts home with such relish — heaved a long, heavy sigh. Then Guan Yu spoke.
"It is a blessing, in truth, that we followed. At the very least, should we die together now, the oath will have been kept."
"…Yunchang."
"The vow to die on the same day, at the same hour. Not once, not for a single moment, have I forgotten it."
As though her own life were nothing weighed against that vow, Guan Yu spoke in a voice of perfect calm.
"That's right. The three of us are one body."
Zhang Fei nodded along, her face showing not a trace of regret.
But why on earth are they suddenly doing a whole mood-building session among themselves?
Unable to bear the strange atmosphere that had taken shape inside the prison, I opened my mouth. "You don't actually think I'm going to kill you, do you?"
"?"
"?"
The instant the words left me, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei both wore expressions of pure bewilderment.
"I only asked Liu Bei what she would have done if I had truly meant to kill you. That's all."
Silence dropped over the cell the instant I finished. Guan Yu flushed scarlet and bowed her head; Zhang Fei turned just as red and busied herself looking anywhere else. And Lü Bu, surveying the whole scene, wore the expression of someone one breath away from cracking up.
So a long stillness settled over the prison, and quite some time passed.
"…General-in-Chief. There is something I, too, am curious about — may I ask it?"
Having gathered herself, Liu Bei spoke again. Her sisters' display must have embarrassed her more than a little; a faint flush still lingered on her cheeks.
When I nodded for her to go ahead, she offered her thanks and put the question to me. "Why did you spare us that day — enemies that we were?"
From Liu Bei's standpoint, the most natural question in the world.
I answered it evenly. "You just seemed like someone I'd get along with?"
"…Pardon?"
"Exactly what I said."
Shelter the people, and save the realm. That was the conduct Liu Bei had shown, in the Romance and in the official histories alike. I had no way of knowing whether those deeds truly sprang from a benevolence that simply could not turn its back on the people's suffering, or whether they were acts of meticulous calculation. I had never once met the Liu Bei of the original history face to face — how was I to know?
But whatever the intent behind them, the things Liu Bei had done had, without exception, been for the people's sake. It was the gulf between ideal and reality that so often made her look like a villain — choose the pragmatic path and she seems scheming; choose the idealistic one and she seems a fool. A dilemma of a very particular shape.
And that was precisely why I wanted to watch this Liu Bei a little longer. If she truly did care for the people, then she was someone who could, without question, become an ally.
I turned to Liu Bei, who still had not unraveled the meaning of my answer and looked thoroughly lost. "I have a proposal to make. Care to hear me out?"
"…What sort of proposal?"
It was the conversation I had shared with Jia Xu before coming down to the cells with Lü Bu. I had judged that the three sisters now locked up here could certainly pull off the rescue of Liu Yu. They had already served under Gongsun Zan once, and had even saved his life; if Liu Yu ended up imprisoned, spiriting him out from within would be no great feat. And women of Guan Yu and Zhang Fei's caliber could neutralize soldiers without raising the slightest commotion — ideally suited to covert work, in other words.
"According to the reports on my desk, the Inspector of Youzhou and the Administrator of Beiping will come to blows before long."
"The Administrator of Beiping, you say…"
"That's right. The White Horse General, Gongsun Zan."
Liu Bei fell silent, thinking who knew what.
"But when I looked into it, I was told the Inspector of Youzhou loses. Without fail."
"…He is a man who has crossed blades with the nomadic tribes many times over."
"Exactly. And that is the problem."
Liu Bei gave me a puzzled look, as if to ask what I was getting at.
"The Administrator of Beiping does not intend to let the Inspector of Youzhou live."
"That…"
She evidently had her own suspicions, for she did not deny my words.
"So here is my proposal: go to You Province, bide your time, and take Liu Yu out of Gongsun Zan's hands."
…
"If you accept, I will have you released from this cell. What do you say?"
Liu Bei, who had been listening, opened her mouth. "And if I give you nothing but my word, then simply run the moment I am free — what will you do then?"
"Then there would be nothing I could do about it."
I shrugged at her question. This was no fantasy world with mana-bound oaths or anything of the sort — what power did I have to enforce the terms of a contract? At best, all I could offer was the hollow threat that next time she was caught, there would be no second chance like this one. Only death.
"Although — in my experience, the people who warn me with 'what will you do if I run?' usually aren't the type to actually run."
When I fired it off in a tone of complete conviction, Liu Bei said nothing at all. She only looked at me.
I smiled. "So — will you do it, or won't you?"
For a long moment Liu Bei held her silence, eyes closed. Then she opened her mouth and answered, slow and deliberate.
"I will."