0005 Little Lilac (Part 1)

Shu Fu was startled and involuntarily took two steps back. The butterfly hairpin in her hand slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground. Fortunately, Zhan Yaoguang caught her with quick reflexes and also caught the two delicate and beautiful butterflies.

"What's wrong with you?" Zhan Yaoguang stuffed the butterfly hairpin into her hand.

Shu Fu seemed to have just come to her senses, momentarily stunned and at a loss. She secretly tightened her grip on the hairpin and asked him, "Have you been in this room the whole time? When did you arrive? Did my maids find out?"

Faced with a barrage of questions, Zhan Yaoguang considered his options carefully before deciding to speak in his own words: “I got out of the carriage shortly after you left. I had learned some martial arts before, so I didn’t get noticed on the way here. Later, I went into your room and originally wanted to sit here and wait for you, but you had several maids coming and going, which was very annoying. To avoid them seeing me, I simply stayed here.”

He pointed upwards with his finger.

Shufu looked in the direction he pointed and saw only the beams on the roof.

"What?" Shu Fu didn't understand what he meant.

“I said I was on the roof beam the whole time and didn’t let anyone see me.”

On the roof beam?

Shu Fu quickly looked around the room, making sure she didn't find anything out of place like an escalator in this elegant young lady's boudoir.

"How did you get up there?" Shufu asked curiously.

Zhan Yaoguang was puzzled: "Of course, they jumped up there."

Jumping up such a high beam? That's something only a chivalrous knight-errant from a folk tale could do! It takes more than just some martial arts skills!

Shufu's cat-like eyes slowly widened, making her look extremely lively and adorable.

Zhan Yaoguang felt a sudden urge to reach out and touch her eyelashes. His fingers twitched slightly.

However, he didn't do it after all. The boy clenched his fists tightly, and after a moment, asked again, "The young lady said before that she would take me in as long as I entered this place. Does that still stand?"

Miss Shu Er was always true to her word, so she immediately nodded to him.

The boy visibly cheered, but before he could think of what else to say to her, he heard the girl ask him, "What's your name? What should I call you from now on?"

Instead of answering, Zhan Yaoguang asked, "And you? What's your name?"

“My surname is Shu, and my name is Shu Fu. The ‘Shu’ in ‘Qian Wang Shu Shi Xian Qian Xi, Hou Fei Lian Shi Ben Shu’ and the ‘Fu’ in ‘Zhi Ji He Yi Wei Xi, Ji Fu Rong Yi Wei Chang’,” Shu Fu said. “My elders or my playmates usually call me A Fu.”

Zhan Yaoguang was bewildered for a moment, because he didn't understand a single word of the long, literary passage about the source, but he understood the last sentence.

"Then shall I call you Afu too?" the boy asked, looking at her expectantly.

Shu Fu hesitated for a moment, but couldn't think of a reason to refuse, so she had no choice but to agree.

“My name is Zhan, Yao, Guang.” The boy took her hand very naturally and wrote the words on her palm with his fingers.

After he finished writing, Shu Fu withdrew her hand, carefully recalled the characters, and confirmed that she had never seen them before. So she humbly asked, "What are these characters? I've never seen them before."

Zhan Yaoguang smiled and said, "Of course you couldn't have seen this before. This is the script used in our Miao region. However, my name is derived from Yaoguang, one of the stars in the Big Dipper constellation. These two characters should also be in your script."

Shu Fu nodded and then asked, "What should I call you? Is it okay if I call you A-Zhan?"

In the Dali era, calling someone by their full name was extremely impolite and often seen as contemptuous and provocative. She always tried to find a more affectionate way to address him.

Zhan Yaoguang pondered the two words carefully, then suddenly his face fell, and he said, "No, almost everyone in our village has the surname Zhan. If you call me that, who will know that you are calling me alone?"

"How about we call her Yaoyao?"

Zhan Yaoguang then remembered that there was another way to write the character "Yao" in his name, and about a hundred girls in the village had the same name. So he reluctantly refused again: "No, it sounds like a girl's name."

"What about Ah Guang?"

"..."

The long silence made Shu Fu think he was finally satisfied, and she was about to finalize the name when she saw the boy's face turn completely dark: "...That's what we call the dogs that guard the gate in our village."

"..."

Shu Fu's patience was completely exhausted, and all the anger she had held back from her mother, Mrs. Luo, burst forth all at once.

The girl stopped talking to him, gave a cold "oh" and then walked around him to the large table in the west room. She took out a piece of Xuan paper, pressed it down with a jade paperweight, dipped a rabbit-hair brush in ink, and wrote the character "静" (quiet) in cursive script.

Zhan Yaoguang truly didn't understand why she suddenly became unwilling to speak, but the boy possessed a keen perception akin to that of a young animal, which made him acutely aware that the person before him seemed somewhat unhappy.

Zhan Yaoguang hesitated for a while, then made a great effort and awkwardly shuffled over to stand beside her: "Actually... I have a nickname."

Shufu finally became interested and looked up at him, asking, "What is it?"

“My grandmother always called me ‘Feifei’ when I was little.”

Is it the 'Feifei' from the Classic of Mountains and Seas? The Classic of Mountains and Seas records that 'nurturing it can relieve worries'.

Zhan Yaoguang mumbled, "Hmm...maybe."

It's unlikely to be anything imposing or awe-inspiring.

胐胐.

Shu Fu silently repeated it twice in her mind, and it actually sounded quite natural.

After exchanging names, Shu Fu remembered that her close friend, Princess Li Miao of Huayang, had asked her to copy a copy of Ban Gu's "Admonitions for Women" from the Eastern Han Dynasty and write a policy essay based on it. So she spread out a new sheet of gold-flecked paper and picked up her brush to write.

The young man, new to the Central Plains, found everything in the woman's boudoir fascinating. He wandered around with his hands behind his back, finally stopping in front of a painting hanging on the west wall.

"What is this?" Zhan Yaoguang asked.

Shu Fu dipped the rabbit hair brush into the ink in the inkstone, and without even looking up, she knew what the other person was referring to.

"That was painted by the court painter Mr. Wu Chenzi for my fifteenth birthday coming-of-age ceremony. It depicts distant mountains and hibiscus."

"Oh...and what about this one?"

Shu Fu brushed aside the remaining ink and followed his gaze: "This is called a brush holder, used to hold calligraphy brushes."

Zhan Yaoguang nodded and looked at the phoenix facing the sun screen again. This time, before he could ask a question, Shu Fu called out to him, "Feifei."

"Hmm?" The boy looked at her, secretly recalling the way she had called his name just now: if she had called him that, it didn't seem so undignified.

"If you have nothing to do, could you do me a favor?"

"Oh, what are you doing?"

Shu Fu pulled a sandalwood box from a drawer under the table and handed it to him: "There are two hundred red agate beads, two hundred green jade beads, and two hundred white jade beads inside. I accidentally mixed them up yesterday. Could you help me pick them out?"

Zhan Yaoguang readily agreed without hesitation, took the box, sat down on the couch by the window, and began to carefully sort through the items.

Shu Fu breathed a sigh of relief. This box of jade beads was something she used to use to appease her clingy younger brother. Whenever she asked Shu Mingde to pick up the beads, she would have a chance to read a book. Later, as Shu Mingde grew up, the box of beads was left unused. She thought it would remain there forever, but unexpectedly, it saw the light of day again.

Having dealt with the huge problem of Zhan Yaoguang, Shu Fu focused on copying "Admonitions for Women".

Ban Gu's "Admonitions for Women" consisted of only seven chapters and a little over two thousand words. Even with Shu Fu's meticulous writing, it didn't take her much time. What really gave her a headache was the matter of writing policy essays, as Li Miao had mentioned.

Previously, Shu Rongguang had never required his sisters to read these books, and Shu Fu was happy with it. She usually only read books about local customs and anecdotes, and even when she occasionally heard a woman at a banquet complaining about being punished by her elders to copy "Admonitions for Women," she never took it to heart. Only today, after actually reading the whole text, did she realize that it was actually a book that taught women how to be humble and timid, and to take serving men as their lifelong duty.

Shu Fu frowned, unsure of Li Miao's intentions.

Li Miao was a few years older than her. She turned twenty last year on the Qixi Festival, an age when she should have been married. However, several of her previous marriages fell through due to various unforeseen circumstances.

After that, Li Miao declared that she would not marry and that she would not marry. At the age of eighteen, she built a separate house next to the Prince An's mansion and lived there, and kept more than ten male retainers as her companions.

Prince An and his wife only had this one daughter, so they naturally doted on her and couldn't bear to go against her wishes.

The emperor and empress also doted on this niece. Seeing her resolute attitude, they did not object, but only granted her a wealthy fiefdom, enough to ensure her a life of wealth and happiness.

Princess Li Miao of Huayang was undoubtedly carefree and unrestrained. In her eyes, such a work was worthless. Yet now she entrusted Shu Fu to carefully copy this worthless thing. The deeper meaning behind this is intriguing.

Shu Fu then remembered that Li Miao had mentioned, intentionally or unintentionally, that Empress Sun wanted to implement new decrees in hopes of improving the status of women.

However, the matter of the new decree has not yet been resolved, and the faction in the court, led by the old aristocratic families, is fiercely opposed to it, believing that this move violates ethical norms.

Meanwhile, the scholars from humble backgrounds who benefited from the creation of the imperial examination system naturally supported it in order to express their gratitude and absolute loyalty to the emperor and empress.

Not to mention the current stalemate between the two sides, the new decree is still like a castle in the air. Even when it is actually implemented, those who can comment on the content of the new decree will only be those heroines who fought alongside the emperor and empress. There will be no chance for her, an unknown young lady in her boudoir.

Shu Fu didn't like to make things difficult for herself, so she put aside things she couldn't figure out for the time being. Fortunately, Li Miao didn't restrict when she could send the copy over, and she could think about it for a few more days.

———

I checked my drafts, and I think I'll probably touch on it a little bit around chapters seven or eight (′ω`)