Chapter Eighty-Eight: Words One Must Not Speak Lightly
At the tavern, she had only understood the riddle once the waiting carriage at the door had finally carried them in with its creaking wheels. In the private room upstairs, a man sat neatly at the table, the spread before him laden with dishes, smiling as he watched them arrive. Was it not the young commander, Long Daybreak?
“You didn’t expect it to be me, did you?” he said with a conspiratorial grin.
“I knew it was you all along,” Kaiming replied, refusing to lose face. She pulled out a chair and sat down with a thump. “Who else could have such standing that even the soldiers guarding the camp would obey so obediently?”
Long Daybreak looked at her and smiled. “You knew already?”
Kaiming cast a sidelong glance at Spring Blossom. “Is this your brilliant idea?”
Spring Blossom gave a cheeky laugh and sat down without ceremony on Long Daybreak’s right. “Who cares whose idea it was? As long as there’s wine!” Then she turned to the two of them, who were still standing there in a daze. “Hurry up and sit. Life is short, and it can be gone in the blink of an eye.”
Long Daybreak burst out laughing, and the sip of tea he had just taken sprayed right back out. Life is short? That woman actually used the phrase here?
Kaiming could not help but laugh too. She shot Spring Blossom a glare, then eyed the table of dishes with a mouth already watering. “Why invite us to dinner for no reason?”
“After Yilin returned, he’s been wanting a chance to thank Commander Kaiming,” Long Daybreak said naturally, picking up a chopstickful of braised pork and placing it on the small dish before her. “At first he was troubled by his injuries, and later he simply could not spare the time, so it was delayed. Now at last there is a chance. You won’t refuse me, will you?”
The moment he said that, Kaiming almost choked. There was no way she could refuse now. The women around the table looked at her in surprise, clearly failing to understand Long Daybreak’s sudden intimacy. Embarrassed, Kaiming felt her face grow warm and could only cough awkwardly. “Th-this, I’ve been trying to lose weight lately, so I don’t eat fatty meat...”
Long Daybreak seemed utterly unaware of the strange looks from the women soldiers. He picked up another chopstickful, this time of bright green vegetables. “Then have some vegetables.”
Spring Blossom’s eyes went round with outrage as she glared at Kaiming. The meaning was obvious: You’re stealing the man I had my eye on again!
Kaiming returned a bitter smile. I’m innocent. She truly did not understand why Long Daybreak would do this on purpose, inviting such misunderstanding from the whole table of women. What a waste of good dishes. She caught Spring Blossom’s shadowy glare and felt an itch all over. To divert everyone’s attention, she hurriedly called toward the door, “Barkeep! Wine, more wine!”
A servant boy came bustling in with two crates of narrow-necked enamel bottles of white liquor and set them down with a thud on the table. Everyone’s attention was successfully drawn away.
She finally breathed easier, shooting Long Daybreak a fierce glare. Her lips moved: I’ll settle accounts with you later.
Long Daybreak received the message and ignored it completely, smiling as if nothing had happened.
By the middle of the feast, the women soldiers had long since forgotten the little scene earlier. Spring Blossom had abandoned any pretense of being demure; one foot propped on the chair, sleeves rolled high, face flushed red, she was challenging Long Daybreak to drinking games with all the swagger of a road bully. When she won, she hammered his shoulder; when she lost, she stamped and cursed like a shrew, revealing her true nature without reservation.
Long Daybreak drank cup after cup without hesitation. By the end, he was actually tilting his head back and drinking straight from the bottle, drawing cheers from every woman at the table. Spring Blossom’s eyes lit up even brighter as she admired him. “This is the kind of real man I was looking for!”
Kaiming found an excuse and slipped out.
She did not understand Long Daybreak tonight. It seemed as though he had deliberately come only to get drunk, and that feeling made her deeply uneasy. The second floor of the tavern had a cleverly built bamboo pavilion, and at the corner there was a quiet place where one could look up and see a sky full of stars.
She naturally walked there, leaning against the bamboo railing to gaze at the stars. Her thoughts settled into the dark expanse of night, and the restive agitation in her heart was slowly soothed by the night wind.
She did not know how long she had stood there before heavy footsteps sounded behind her, followed by a rough voice. “So you were here.”
She turned and saw Long Daybreak’s face. He stood against the light, with the lamps below the bamboo pavilion shining brightly, leaving his features half in shadow. He smelled strongly of wine and walked unsteadily, staggering toward her.
Kaiming frowned slightly and reached out to help him.
He shoved her hand away. “What are you doing? I’m not drunk!”
An unmistakably drunken line. She shook her head helplessly.
He flung himself against the railing and said loudly, “It’s only a few women. What kind of drinkers are they? A little wine and they’ll all be laid out flat!”
She shot him a look of exasperation. From the way things looked, it was you who’d been laid out flat.
Long Daybreak glanced at her, then at the sky. “Looking at the stars?”
Kaiming gave a faint smile. “Nothing so poetic. I was just thinking aimlessly.”
He leaned heavily against the carved railing again, and the bamboo gave a dangerous creak. She was worried the weight of his body might snap it and send him rolling down like some clumsy panda.
Imagining that amusing sight, the corners of her mouth twitched upward.
Long Daybreak, of course, knew nothing of the nonsense in her head. With reddened eyes, he drew a deep breath and looked at the sky with a faint laugh. “Do you remember the first time we drank together?”
She paused. Their first drink together was something she did remember. On the low dirt mound inside the garrison camp, because she had been homesick and missed her daughter, she had even hummed a children’s song.
“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, shining brightly in the sky...” he hummed a couple of lines to the tune at random, and remarkably, he did not go off-key. Kaiming looked at him in surprise. He had heard it only once, and yet he remembered.
“Very lovely,” he murmured.
Kaiming’s thoughts drifted back at once to that night. The pitch-black sky was studded with glittering stars. Beneath that canopy of light, Long Daybreak had turned to look at her and quietly said, “Very lovely.”
“Kaiming...”
Pulled back to the present, she answered instinctively.
Long Daybreak moved closer and stared fixedly into her face. “Why did you push me toward Spring Blossom?”
She was startled, then even more bewildered, looking at him in confusion.
“You clearly know... you clearly know...” He was getting a little incoherent, as if trying to express something but unable to find the words, his face already knotted with distress.
A bad premonition rose faintly in her heart. Could Long Daybreak’s invitation tonight have been a banquet with hidden intent, the drinking merely a pretext?
She opened her mouth, about to say something, when suddenly she heard Spring Blossom’s loud voice from behind. “Where’s Long Daybreak? Where did Long Daybreak go?!” Drunk enough that she no longer even used his title, she was calling him by name.
Long Daybreak’s brows drew together. Without a word, he grabbed Kaiming by the arm and slipped her into the corner of the passage.
Spring Blossom was still calling from the other side. Kaiming asked softly, “Is that all right?”
“It’s fine.” Long Daybreak peered out and said carelessly, “When I came out, I told the guards to handle it. He can keep her steady.”
Sure enough, a deep male voice came from the room. “Do you want to wake up the whole tavern? The commander went to relieve himself and will be back soon. Stop shouting!”
The voice of the companion followed at just the right moment. “Boss, let’s keep drinking!”
At last Spring Blossom fell silent, and the door to the room shut with a thud.
Long Daybreak let out a breath, looking as though he could not be bothered to tolerate any more disturbance. Kaiming watched him with amusement. “What is it? Does the enthusiasm of my Thirty-Sixth Squad captain prove too much for Commander Long Daybreak to bear?”
He snorted. “A blessing I can’t afford.”
Her laughter grew harder to suppress, and she pretended to sigh. “What a heartless man. What a pity for Spring Blossom—such a straightforward soul, and so rarely this fiery toward the commander...” She felt her arm tighten in his grip and cried out in pain, quickly swallowing the rest of her tease.
Long Daybreak’s reddened eyes were suddenly cold, the mingling of ice and fire oddly vivid. For some reason, his expression darkened all at once, and he said icily, “You say I’m heartless?”
Kaiming realized he was taking the joke seriously only after he had already begun to drink too deeply. She quickly smiled and said, “Just a joke, Commander. Don’t take it to heart.”
Long Daybreak was clearly drunk. He leaned in close, the strong smell of wine pouring straight into her face, and muttered hoarsely, “Anyone can call me heartless, except you.”
Kaiming looked at him in astonishment. As he pressed nearer, she suddenly realized a more serious problem. Long Daybreak was drunk, and he seemed far too close.
Her back was pressed against the bamboo wall, with nowhere to retreat. Long Daybreak’s face was inches away, his eyes half-lidded; even so, he had shed half of his drunken haze, and although narrowed, those eyes still shone in the dark with a brilliant, piercing light.
That gaze was unexpectedly sharp.
A deep voice rumbled in his throat. “There are some truths, Commander Kaiming, that I wonder whether you would care to hear.”
Kaiming opened her mouth, inexplicably flustered, and forced a smile. “If it’s something unimportant, then there’s no need to say it...”
His hand tightened. With a muffled groan, he said, “To you, it may be unimportant, but to me...”
Her arm felt close to being crushed. In pain, she did not dare make a sound and could only frown, laughing weakly. “We’re all brothers here. What are you doing? If someone sees us, how awful would that be?”
“Who’s your brother?” he cut in at once.
Kaiming gave a strained smile. “Commander Long Daybreak is drunk. Let’s go back. The night wind will do you no good.”
“Kaiming, actually, ever since Yilin, I...” he began haltingly. “I...”
“Long Daybreak.” She cut him off swiftly and looked steadily at him, her expression calm. “Some things cannot be said carelessly. Once they are said, we may not even remain friends...”
His tongue seemed tied. The surging words clogged in his mouth, and with her light, matter-of-fact tone, not a single one could break free.
He looked back at her, reading the expression on her face. His gaze burned bright as lightning.
“Long Daybreak, you’re drunk.” She smiled at him.
“Yes, I’m drunk.” He answered blindly.
“Then let’s go back.”
He did not move, and she did not dare move either.
The night remained tranquil. A faintly cool breeze sighed across her face, while the revelry below continued.
His hand reached out and gently settled at her waist.
She startled, a little stiff, and stared at him blankly. After saying it so plainly, did he still not understand?
“Just once. Just tonight. Right now, all right?” he said in a low voice, hoarse as if drawn from a broken bellows. One hand slid around her back, and with both arms he gathered her fiercely into his embrace.
She did not move, her mind gone slightly blank. A warm current wrapped around her entire body, burning every inch of skin as though it were on fire.