QT: Don't fall in love with the Male Lead

Bai Mi is a very reluctant nurse, but she keeps an eye on how Xi Zirui's back is healing, and applies the ointment herself, much to her own consternation and Xi Zirui's amusement.

Han Yu's nightly visits grow shorter. According to him Su Xueyi is suspicious of how quiet both of them have been.

They won't remain quiet for long, though.

Three days after he wakes up Bai Mi tells him they're going to be on the move that night.

"How exactly are you going to take me out of here?" he asks, as she flits around the room fitting robes and jewelry into knapsacks. 

"You're going to be kidnapped, obviously," she says, running her hands through her artfully coiffed hair and pulling out a few strands.

"How unfortunate for me," he says, struggling to get up from the bed and put on some coarse servant's robes.

"Even more so for me," Bai Mi says, and punches herself in the eye as Xi Zirui watches, slack-jawed. 

She's really determined to sell the whole kidnapping thing, uh?

"That really hurt," she says shaking out her fist with a hiss. "Little brother better appreciate it."

"I do," Xi Zirui says, and means it. But he still isn't quite sure why exactly Bai Mi is doing it.

She seems to read the confusion written over his face. "Little brother reminds me of myself."

Xi Zirui can't help it, he lets out a snort. The last time Bai Mi used those words it was about Li Siqi. Is that a requirement to make her good books? Be like her?

Bai Mi frowns at Xi Zirui's amusement. "I don't mean myself now! Obviously, I would never be caught having an affair," she points at her bump to emphasize her point. "But I was once young and naive too, and thought I might find love in the harem, if not with the Emperor."

She smirks and raises her eyebrows at him. "That didn't go well."

Xi Zirui nods his chin towards her stomach. "And the father?"

She shrugs. "Scratching an itch, nothing else."

"Sounds lonely."

"That's why little brother reminds me of myself when I first came to the palace," she says and shakes her head. "Being alone is not the worst thing that can happen to a person."

"Well, I'm thankful for elder sister's help anyway." 

The mood has grown perhaps too sentimental for Bai Mi's liking and she gets up from the bed with a groan. "Well, don't squander it."

---

Not long after, Jin Ranyu comes in to Bai Mi's room from the courtyard's door, his head wrapped in a dark cloth that only leaves his eyes exposed, and a dark cloak.

As the Captain of the Palace guard he knows all the best accesses in and out of the palace. 

"We need to go quickly," he says, nodding towards Bai Mi, who locks the doors to her room and scatters a few things on the floor before handing Jin Ranyu the knapsack filled with expensive robes and jewelry.

"Take this with you, we want to make the robbery and kidnapping more believable." 

Throwing one last look at Xi Zirui, she tilts her neck forward and says, "Farewell, Xi-fei."

Xi Zirui can only return her small nod before Jin Ranyu is throwing a thick cloak over his head and dragging him out of the room.

He has no idea where he's being lead to, and his heart thumps in anxiety for a long part of the way until Jin Ranyu helps him into the back of what he assumes is a cart and takes off the cloak hiding his face.

Their eyes meet for an uncomfortably long time but they stay silence without knowing what to say to each other. 

They don't really know each other, and Jin Ranyu is helping him out of a perceived debt of gratitude to Han Yu for not giving him and Cao Fei up.

"Thank you," Xi Zirui says settling himself as best he can under the cart's tarp. 

Jin Ranyu lowers his eyes. "It could have been Fei'er in Xi-fei's place...this humble servant is grateful for Xi-fei's and First Prince's protection."

"I hope the two of you can be happy for a long time," Xi Zirui says, and then adds, "Be careful."

Jin Ranyu nods to him solemnly and then watches as the cart starts moving and Xi Zirui disappears down a deserted side road, away from the Imperial Palace's towering stone walls.

---

He doesn't ride for a long time before the cart is pulling into a propriety. From the little Xi Zirui can tell he thinks he's being led to some type cellar in a rich household.

The man driving the cart unhitches it from the horses and then leads them away.

Xi Zirui doesn't wait long until a servant carrying a lantern on a stick comes to seek him out.

In silence, the young woman leads him through a manicured courtyard, and into the main house by winding corridors. 

She bows politely outside two double doors carved with soaring luan birds indicating Xi Zirui should go in.

He doesn't know what to expect until he opens the door into an extravagant hall where Liao Min sits at a table polishing her sword, while Li Siqi examines a bamboo strip scroll. 

Of course, who else would be willing to help them?

Li Siqi smiles broadly at him and gets up from the table to greet him. "Imperial mother told me about what Xi-fei went through after we left. Xi-fei can rest assured that he is safe here."

People keep calling him Xi-fei, but he's no longer an Imperial Concubine. He derived some amusement from title in the beginning but now it settles like ill-fitting robes over his body.

"Her Highness may call this one Xi."

Liao Min leaves her sword to join her wife. "Then, young master Xi, let us show you to your rooms."

---

Xi Zirui spends the following week in Liao Min's and Li Siqi's house waiting anxiously for Han Yu to join him.

He's restricted to a few suits of rooms, to ensure that as few people as possible see him, and while his hostesses do the best to keep him entertained, he grows antsy fast.

Liao Min offers to let him practice with her swords, an idea he greets with an unenthusiastic hum.

Li Siqi suggests that he have his pick of her library, but all her books are about military strategy, filed irrigation, and poetry. Xi Zirui would rather watch paint dry.

They both assure him that Han Yu is well, and that they have regular updates from Bai Mi back in the palace.

The Emperor easily believed that he was kidnapped, and moreover, declared it to be King Diming's doing. 

However, he found it hilarious that Diming would go to such extents to relieve him of an adulterous spouse and decided it was punishment enough, for both Xi Zirui and Diming. 

The negotiations regarding a future marriage alliance were of course off. Not that King Diming had much time to say anything on the matter.

---

One day Xi Zirui gets a welcome surprise when he walks into one of the rooms he's allowed to move through and finds Xiao Gou sitting politely on his knees.

The little boy's lower lip starts trembling as soon as he sees him, and he runs up to hug Xi Zirui by the knees.

"Xi-fei, I'm so sorry, I didn't know what Granny was doing, I didn't know that the words she told me to write down would be used against Xi-fei." 

Xiao Gou cries for a solid fifteen minutes in Xi Zirui's lap, wetting the front of his robes. Xi Zirui pats his back comfortingly and makes shushing noises.

He confirms what Xi Zirui already suspected. That Shen Yun approached Granny Ma to act as a spy for him, and when she was reluctant to do so he blackmailed her with threats to Xiao Gou.

Xi Zirui doesn't resent her, but the scars on his back and mind, are still too fresh for him to truly forgive her. Even if he understands her circumstances.

Xiao Gou also tells him that he's going to begin working here, at Liao Min's family estate, after being dismissed from his duties in the palace for showing too much loyalty to an immoral person.

He's sure that Xiao Gou will be well-treated here, and it makes him relieved to know that he wont be leaving him alone in the Imperial Palace after he and Han Yu leave.

Now if only Han Yu would get here sooner.

That night, Xi Zirui goes to bed in his borrowed room, and doesn't wake up.

---

When he comes to he's in that glaring white limbo space, which can only mean one thing.

"Ni Ni, how the fuck did I die?" he shouts, looking around at the infinite expanse of white nothingness while his heart beats frantically inside his ribcage.

Everything was fine, why did he die? Su Xueyi's favor hadn't dropped all the way to 0 yet. He and Han Yu should at least have a few years together, before he completely disappeared from Su Xueyi's mind. 

His wounds were healing fine when we went to bed, so how?

"The Emperor died," Ni Ni says, her voice echoing through the empty space like the clap of thunder.

"How...how did he die?"

Ni Ni tells him, not only that, but everything that happened after his death:

Shen Yun expected to be highly rewarded for his role in uncovering Xi Zirui's betrayal, he expected to at least have his former pavilion back as well as his position as Su Xueyi's favorite male spouse.

That wasn't what happened.

While Xi Zirui was still convalescing in Bai Mi's rooms, one of the court's officials brought his young son to court. A boy no older than 18, and the Emperor immediately took a shine to him.

The official had no problem in offering up his son on a silver platter, and Su Xueyi wasted no time announcing that he would be taking a new concubine.

Probably propelled by bitterness and the sheer dramatic irony of it all, Shen Yun stabbed the emperor through the eye with a chopstick in a fit of blind rage, killing him instantly.

He was himself killed on the spot by the Imperial Guard.

With the Emperor dead, he couldn't hold any favor towards Xi Zirui, and therefore he too died immediately. 

That's how Han Yu found him when he came to Liao Min's and Li Siqi's palace the next morning.

Xi Zirui's heart aches at imagining his pain at finding Xi Zirui dead when they were so close to being free together.

After Xi Zirui's death, Bai Mi became regent. Of course this was a very unstable position, and many other forces where vying for the throne.

She called on the Liao family to help her uphold her position, by promising them a future marriage alliance to her son who would be Emperor.

She also called Han Yu back to court, but he wouldn't accept. The Imperial Palace was haunted by memories for him now.

His only request was that Xi Zirui were buried next to his mother. Bai Mi ordered a mausoleum built to house both of them, instead of the unmarked grave Han Yu's mother was relegated to.

Han Yu left for some time, and joined a Daoist monastery, hoping the Path would bring him answers and the inner peace he could no longer find.

Bai Mi's son was born, and she named him Han Xuanlu(1), in remembrance of Xi Zirui's beautiful guqin playing.

Not even that little aside manages to make Xi Zirui crack a smile, while Ni Ni tells him all about the world, and the people he has left behind.

After a few years, Han Yu came back to the Imperial Palace, willing to teach his younger brother all that he himself had been thought about how to be an Emperor.

He would never marry. The people called him the Lonesome Prince.

He made the Fragrant Spring Winds pavilion his permanent residence inside the Imperial Palace, and sometimes would sit under the weeping willows and look out at the still waters of the lake, lost in memories. Sometimes he would bring out paper and inks, and spend hours sketching a young man's mischievous grin.

After enough years had passed only a few people still knew whose face Han Yu rendered so lovingly.

Most servants just called him 'the Prince's Ghost Lover'.

Liao Min and Li Siqi lived happy, carefree lives for many years. Until one of Liao Min's old wartime injuries started acting up in the winters, and then in the summer too, eventually she couldn't move. Li Siqi stood by her side, watching over her as she faded away, both of them gray and wrinkled.

One day Liao Min didn't wake up either, and Li Siqi decided their house was no longer a home, and went back to live in the Imperial Palace.

She and Han Yu would often sit together under the weeping willow, contemplating the still waters of the lake, and remembering the happiness they once had.

Old age filled Han Yu's days with ghosts. He saw remnants of the past in every corner of the little pavilion. Eventually it became too much for him.

He took a few paintings of his Ghost Lover and walked into the lake, never to walk out again.

Xi Zirui only realizes Ni Ni is trying to talk with him by the third time she shouts, "Host!"

"Does Host want to hear about all the points and rewards he got for finishing this world?"

The laugh that bubbles out of Xi Zirui's chest is a bitter, hollow thing.

"Just get me out of here," he says, and closes his eyes against the light that hurts him.

---

(1) - It's taboo to name children after someone famous or an ancestor in China. So Bai Mi wouldn't name her child 'Zirui' out of respect for him, because that would actually be very disrespectful. Instead I had her choose a name that would remind her of him, and one of his qualities (ha!) instead.