Liu Bei Really Did Solve a Great Many Things
The wine table had been shoved far off to one side, and cold sweat soaked me from head to toe.
"The rouge on my lips is all gone, isn't it?"
"Haaah..."
Zhao Mi looked down at me with both eyes open and licked her lips. The red rouge at the corners of her mouth was hopelessly smeared, glistening with spit, and still she smiled from ear to ear.
"The celebration will be a grand one. The Governor of Xuzhou has come in person, after all."
The enchantress—surely hiding at least nine tails somewhere under that skirt—gave her hips a sway, finished the business she had been about, and slipped out.
"I hadn't even thought of that..."
I snatched the bottle of clear wine from the table and drank it down in great gulps, and every last thing Zhao Mi had just done branded itself on me, one act after another. It had been shockingly good. And yet... hmm.
"Baijin! Baijin, where are you?"
Just as Zhao Mi was sashaying toward the door, Liu Bei's voice came calling from outside.
"He's calling for you?"
She jabbed a finger at the door beyond, fox-eyes dancing. I honestly thought a pair of fox ears was about to sprout from the top of her head.
I shoved what had just happened out of my mind and hurried out. Liu Bei was there to meet me with a sword in each hand, sweat pouring off him.
"Whew—practicing a sword dance in another man's house isn't rude, is it?"
"Not at all. If anything, I'm sorry I missed it."
"Hmm. Right. I hear you've been learning martial arts from Yide lately? Starting tomorrow, go see Zilong and learn the spear as well. Tell them you want to learn, and they'll teach you everything."
"Two instructors that lavish... what luxury."
Liu Bei laughed brightly and slid both swords back into his belt. Then he strode up and seized me by both arms.
"Baijin, in all sorts of ways I've really imposed on you—hm? But why are you sweating like this? You're soaked clean through."
"Ah, this is, well..."
"Oh dear, oh dear. I really did do something I shouldn't have. You're tense because I stood in front of those pregnant wives—women who'd been waiting desperately for their husband to come home from the battlefield—and said, 'Let me introduce your new concubine.'"
There was tension in it, yes. But there was also a certain unrelated fox who had suddenly decided to make her move...
"There, there. I'll see that the childbirth gifts for both your wives are very generous, so let's find a good way to smooth this over, eh?"
"I—I should wash up first."
"Oh, I could use a bath my—no! Just show me to a suitable bath in the guest quarters."
"Why so? There's the bath in the rear garden of the main residence."
"Eh-hey. I'm a guest. A guest."
Liu Bei truly did go looking for the bath in the guest quarters, the sort of place where lodgers stayed. By coincidence he ran into Zhuge Liang there, fresh from his lessons with Master Chen Ji, and even met my brother-in-law Su Shuang and his wife, who had rushed over at the news. And when I went to wash in the main residence and change into clean clothes... she was there.
"Were you about to bathe first?"
"Uh. Mm."
"I meant to pay my respects to the two ladies anyway. I'll attend your bath before that."
And so Diaochan, done up like a flower in full bloom, began slowly undoing the ties of her robe in the bathhouse of the rear garden. It was, without question, an outrageous luxury. So why did it feel as if every relationship I had today had tangled itself into a knot?
I let Diaochan attend me, washed myself clean from head to toe, and came out. Her face was flushed crimson. After a long silence, she spoke.
"...Lord Danju, I truly am asking because I don't know. Would it be improper of me to ask why a woman's powder and rouge were smeared on... a man's thing?"
"You'll come to understand, little by little."
"...?"
"Ahem. Hrm!"
That ice-cold beauty was flustered and asking for the first time, and damn it, just looking at her face she was devastatingly pretty. Anyway, with Diaochan—who had even dressed me—I headed for the reception hall of the main residence as if nothing at all were amiss.
Inside, a feast of every delicacy of land and sea was already laid out, and the room was full of guests.
"The man of the hour has arrived."
Liu Bei, washed and fresh from the guest quarters, waved to me.
"Brother-in-law! Heartfelt congratulations on becoming a father!"
Su Shuang had come bearing a gift as well.
"Ho ho, so at last I behold Lord Zhang Baijin, the merchant of benevolence and righteousness? Chen Yuanfang has, quite shamelessly, accepted an invitation to dine."
Master Chen Ji—Yuanfang, father of Chen Qun—was here too.
"Elder brother, I hardly know which congratulations to offer first, but please, sit."
Zhuge Liang, wearing a complicated expression no words could quite capture, asked me to sit beside him.
"Are you well? Lu Zijing has come as a guest to Lord Baijin's house."
Even Lu Su had heard the news and come. Because of them, the whole house had erupted into a full-blown celebration.
"The first cup is a toast of congratulations, for becoming the father of two children."
"Thank you."
"The second cup is a toast of consolation, for taking yet another wife in the middle of all that."
"..."
"For the record, I don't spare a thought for any woman but your sister."
"Th-then you ought to take a cup yourself, brother-in-law, shouldn't you? The due date is next month, isn't it? I hope my nephew is a boy."
"A late-born child—I'll simply have to raise this one all the better!"
There was a fair gap in age between Su Shuang and my elder sister, so who could say how many more they might have. It was cause for celebration all the same. After that, cups were taken one after another as each man fell into talk with his own counterpart, and at the center of it all, beside me, the master of the house, stood Liu Bei.
"Lord Su, Lord Lu! Now that Master Chen Yuanfang, the great scholar of Yingchuan, has come to our Xuzhou to nurture the next generation, it feels as though men of learning are gathering even around a lacking man like me!"
No one alive was better than Liu Bei at lifting the mood of a drinking party. Master Chen laughed a gentle ho-ho, drank every cup pressed upon his aged frame, and chuckled aloud. The word Yingchuan snagged on me, and I turned to Chen Ji.
"Master Chen, you've been tutoring my brother-in-law, and I haven't even paid my respects until now. Please accept a cup."
"No. If anything, I wish to thank Xuzhou. In the midst of war, you have received an old man whose only possession is having read a few lines of text, and you have welcomed him with the courtesy due a great scholar."
"I, Liu Bei, may have been the one to invite him, but the man who has treated him so well is surely Baijin here, is it not? Ha ha ha ha!"
He was said to be sixty-six this year, and he was a remarkably hale old gentleman.
"Master Chen, hasn't Yingchuan been a land of outstanding scholars since ancient times?"
Anyone who knew the Romance of the Three Kingdoms knew the Yingchuan cartel.
"There are a fair number whose names are known."
"Among them, the name Xun Yu is famous, and his kinsmen Xun Chen and Xun You are talents among talents, aren't they?"
"Those lads truly were brilliant. How their father, Master Xun, used to boast of them."
From Chen Ji's point of view, they were merely cute juniors of about his son's age.
"Zhong Yao was a boy I looked after kindly, his father and I being friends, and Du Xi, and the brothers Xin Ping and Xin Pi—I know them all. But if we are speaking the names of Yingchuan's Confucian scholars, there is one thing I wish to ask Lord Zhang."
"What is it?"
"What do you think of Han Wenjie?"
Han Wenjie... Han Fu... Han Fu, the Governor of Jizhou before Yuan Shao?
"Master Han, how did he..."
"The one who sponsored that friend was your father, and I was his companion. He was not a man who should have died like that."
"Lord Chen, I know the former Governor of Jizhou well myself."
"So you do. He was one of the Thousand-Gold Merchants who stood with Baijin's father."
Talk of Yingchuan had turned into talk of Han Fu, who came from there, and I understood well enough that this old gentleman currently stood an overwhelming first in sheer seniority among the men of Yingchuan.
"And that is why I am grateful to Lord Zhang, of the merchant house that sponsored my friend—grateful enough that, once the realm is at peace, I should like to recommend you for office in my own name."
"!?"
"Well, well. For Master Chen to think so highly of Baijin is a tremendous honor for Baijin himself."
Liu Bei tossed in the encouraging word, and Chen Ji laughed long and called Zhuge Liang over.
"I have never seen so clever a child. The moment I laid eyes on him, I set the other scholars aside and decided this boy was one I must take as my own disciple."
"It is an honor, Master."
"Having heard the news, Zheng Kangcheng of Qingzhou is coming here as well."
"What? Master Chen! Master Zheng is coming here too?"
The Zheng Kangcheng who had startled that question out of Liu Bei was a great scholar of Hebei, famous under his true name, Zheng Xuan. By the age of twenty-one he was said to have read every book in the Han and to be versed alike in the Confucian, Legalist, and Daoist schools—a Qingliu scholar who had slipped free of the Partisan Prohibitions, an aide to Grand General He Jin, and a man whom even Yuan Shao would later invite to instruct him.
"Has there ever been happier news? To think even he is coming!"
"They say he is bringing along one young man of the Sun clan, calling him a disciple, so prepare a decent room for the fellow."
"Do you mean it? He was on the closest terms with my own teacher. I'll be able to hear a great many fine teachings."
At those words Lu Su smiled at once and raised his cup.
"Indeed! It seems our lord truly receives the blessing of the Confucian scholars of the Qingliu. Were you not originally a disciple of Master Lu Zigan?"
Whoa. Now that I thought about it, he was right.
In the chaos at the end of the Later Han, the court had its Zhuoliu faction and the provinces their Qingliu. The Qingliu were the so-called great masters who left the court determined to stand pure and aloof, and pursued learning in lofty solitude. Lu Zhi of the Qingliu had been the one to teach Liu Bei in the first place; after him they were inviting Zheng Xuan, Lu Zhi's friend and another great scholar of Qingzhou; and here sat Chen Ji, the great scholar of Yingchuan. Just as Lu Su had said, Liu Bei had in a single stroke become a man who studied under the three great Qingliu scholars of Youzhou, Qingzhou, and Yuzhou—the ridiculous spectacle of the finest warlord the Qingliu had painstakingly raised. The prestige of the name alone was more than enough. And would scholars of that caliber come empty-handed? Of course not. They would drag along every talent they had cultivated.
"I meant to bring one sharp lad from my hometown as well, but that fellow went off to Cao Cao. A pity."
"Master Chen, forgive the question, but whom were you trying to summon to Xuzhou..."
"Guo Jia. Garbage for a personality, and yet the boy never said anything that wasn't true. But Wenruo went and poached him for Yanzhou."
Aigoo, Master Chen! To speak so lightly of an SSR talent slipping away right in front of your eyes...
"In his place, lacking though they are, my son and my nephew will assist the Governor of Xuzhou."
In their place, Chen Qun and Chen Chong would be coming to Liu Bei.
And so, from that boisterous drinking party, people began to take their leave one by one. Lu Su had arrived late and was not, by nature, a heavy drinker, so he excused himself for the sake of the morning. Zhuge Liang, at an age when he ought not to have been drinking in the first place, went out supporting his thoroughly drunken master, Chen Ji, to see him home. Su Shuang likewise slipped quietly away for my elder sister's sake. The one who remained was Liu Bei.
"If you can still drink, shall I call not some mere cup-mate, but Yunchang, or Yide, or Zilong?"
"Ha ha ha. No need."
"True enough. From here on, it's your honeymoon."
As the wine got into him, Liu Bei's face grew slyer and slyer.
Rattle—
The door opened. The ladies came in to clear the tables and brought fresh dishes, steam still curling off them. Zhuge Xue and Huan Ying set Liu Bei's wine table; Diaochan and Zhao Mi set mine. All four of them were smiling.
"My, my. I feel I've stayed so long I've imposed on my two sisters-in-law, and they are hardly women left to keep a house alone."
"Not at all. The Governor of Xuzhou, master of Xuzhou, has graced us, and I only worry our hospitality has been lacking."
"Ho ho. And Commandant Zhao's daughter is here as well."
"Please pay me no mind. I am only here to help this household."
Before Liu Bei, Zhao Mi kept those narrow, smiling eyes lowered and did not show her smile.
"Originally, I meant to recommend to my husband that he take this woman in."
"!?"
So Ying was airing household business now, too.
"She's attentive to Lady Zhuge, and she helped us in every way, material and otherwise, while we were carrying the children, so privately I thought, if only my husband were willing. And yet you've brought home a beauty of such peerless looks."
"I agree with that. I'm hardly in a position to say anything about the head of the house taking a concubine."
"Um, I..."
"Oh my. Wouldn't it all depend on the will of the head of the house?"
Right in front of me those narrow eyes opened just a fraction, and the mole at the corner of Zhao Mi's lips twitched.
"We women have spoken too long. We shall take our leave..."
Damn it. Just do it.
"Governor of Xuzhou!"
"Uh—y-yes?"
"Even numbers are better than odd ones, aren't they? Two rather than one, four rather than two! Isn't that why you wear two swords yourself, Governor?"
"That is, well..."
"I intend to speak to Commandant Zhao and take his daughter into this house as well."
In that instant, the four women reacted as one.
"Oh my?"
"Oh!"
"As expected..."
"Hmmmm?"
The wine cup in Liu Bei's hand trembled, and he dropped his chopsticks.
"A ritual master... no! A witness to the marriage, and a speech of blessing!"
"I'll do it! Right here, this very moment!"
And so our household, which had begun as three, became seven.
Such is life, I suppose....