0049 Golden Hairpin (Part 3)

The next morning, Shufu woke up because of the heat.

Before last night, she and Zhan Yaoguang had not gone all the way, so she still held onto her last bit of modesty and insisted on sleeping separately from him.

But things changed completely after last night.

After Zhan Yaoguang returned from Longzhengfang, he insisted on crawling into her bed and sleeping close to her. Shu Fu was sleeping soundly at the time, and after trying to push him away a few times without success, she let him hold her in his arms.

But the boy was hot, and when he lay in the quilt, it was as if a huge heater had been added to the quilt out of thin air.

Several times she unconsciously stretched her hands and feet out from under the covers to cool off, but Zhan Yaoguang would notice her soon after and drag her back under the covers.

As dawn broke, the thin light filtering through the window was sifted by the soft curtains into a deep, crimson hue. Shufu, nestled in this pinkish glow, gradually began to awaken.

"Feifei, stop hugging me, I'm so hot..."

The girl's head was throbbing, and she used her hand to push away the arm that was across her waist.

The hand paused for a moment, then obediently withdrew from her body. Soon after, she heard the boy's tentative voice faintly: "Afu, are you awake? If you are awake, I want to kiss you."

If you want to kiss, just kiss her. Why do you have to ask if she's awake?

Shu Fu's mind was a complete blank, and she slowly hummed in agreement.

After receiving a response, the boy's kisses landed heavily on the back of her neck, both soft and moist, like being showered by a gentle, lingering dark spring rain.

Zhan Yaoguang kissed her for a while, but seeing that she still didn't respond, he simply buried himself in the quilt, hooked his arms around her waist, and kissed the hollow of the girl's waist in the dim light.

Shufu felt a tingling sensation in her tailbone and instinctively let out an "Ah!"

She was fully awake and quickly looked down, only to see Zhan Yaoguang emerging from under the covers again, bringing with her a warm and fragrant scent.

The boy had fair skin, red lips, and bright, lustrous eyes. His hair was disheveled and brushed against his face and white undergarment, making him appear especially alluring and captivating.

Shu Fu paused for a moment, remembering how the two of them had been intimately entwined on this bed last night, and blushed as she looked away.

Zhan Yaoguang leaned over and hugged her: "Afu, pay attention to me, I'm so hot."

Shu Fu felt something hard rubbing against her lower back, her eyes reddening, and she said in a muffled voice, "If you don't hug me, I won't feel hot."

"...No, it was like this before I held you."

Shu Fu was startled. She didn't know that a young man full of vigor could have morning erections. She just felt that it was too incongruous that such a surging and intense desire was hidden under his clean and handsome appearance.

Could it be that he's been facing her every single day these past few days...?

The thought flashed through her mind, and she felt a surge of heat. She then threw herself down and lay completely face down on the bed.

"Zhan Yaoguang, I hate you the most!"

Zhan Yaoguang was somewhat puzzled.

He watched as her shoulder blades swayed beautifully beneath her clothes, and his heart overflowed with joy that he couldn't suppress. So he slowly replied to her, "But I like you so much."

Shu Fu paused for a moment, then looked up and saw the boy kneeling not far away, staring intently at her.

She suddenly remembered that Zhan Yaoguang didn't really understand the hypocritical tricks of the Dali people. Otherwise, he wouldn't have thought she was playing him until last night when she admitted her feelings for him. Only then did he dare to be sure of her feelings.

To avoid him misunderstanding again, Shu Fu cleared her throat and said in a low voice, "What you just said was a lie. I don't dislike you that much."

“…Oh,” Zhan Yaoguang blinked, a smile slowly spreading across her face, “I actually guessed it.”

Shu Fu's eyelashes fluttered, and she heard the other person continue:

"But what I said was true."

...

In the end, the two did not make it work. While Zhan Yaoguang was looking at her in a daze, Shu Fu slipped out of the tent beside him. By the time he came to his senses, she had already taken off her outer garment from the sandalwood cangue and put it on, then disappeared into the bathhouse to wash up.

Zhan Yaoguang sat there for a while, then jumped off the bed and followed him into the next room.

Shu Fu finished washing up first, and as soon as she stepped into the room, she heard a soft, tinkling sound like the wind tapping on a jade chime.

She looked in the direction of the sound and saw two objects tied with two thin silk ribbons at the top corner of the canopy bed facing the screen, swaying gently in the breeze.

One was the silver moon that Zhan Yaoguang had tied to her fingertip last night, and the other was... a pearl?

Shu Fu walked closer and saw that the item was hung too high for her to reach, so she moved a stool to the bedside and stepped on it to barely be able to place the bead in her palm for a closer look.

She held her breath and examined it intently for a while, feeling that the pearl's luster, size, and smoothness were unlike anything she had ever seen in her life.

Although she came from an official family, her father was ultimately just an upright civil official, and their family was far from being the wealthiest. They were only slightly more comfortable than the likes of Liang Wanshan, and could not support the extravagance and arrogance of the sisters.

not to mention--

The family wealth was not the most important thing; what was rare was the quality and size of this pearl. Even in Li Miao's dowry, she had never seen such a treasure. It must be something that would be hard to come by even if one spent all one's wealth. It was probably only seen when foreign countries came to pay tribute to the emperor, at the residence of Empress Sun.

Shu Fu sighed inwardly for a while, then heard someone push open the door behind her. She turned around and asked, "Feifei, did you hang this here?"

Seeing that she had finally noticed, Zhan Yaoguang happily strolled over to her side, looked up at her, and said, "Hmm! This is a gift for you. Do you like it?"

Shu Fu's face flushed, and her heart felt as if it had been gently brushed by the tail of a raccoon, sending a long, lingering flutter of excitement through her.

But she quickly suppressed these emotions and whispered, "I can't accept this, it's too precious..."

She was naturally happy to receive the gift from her beloved husband, but the gift was far too precious, and she felt rather guilty accepting it.

Shu Fu said in a low voice as she took down both items, bent down and stuffed them into Zhan Yaoguang's hands: "And this, this is for you to use to entice hair, you can't give it to me either."

The gift the boy had given with such sincerity was returned to him, leaving him feeling bewildered, helpless, and even a little sad.

He clenched his fist, and when he looked up again, his eyes clearly held a hint of testing and self-doubt: "You don't like it? But I don't have anything else on me right now. Wait for me, I'll go find something better for you, okay?"

“That’s not what I meant,” Shufu explained patiently. “They are nice, but you can’t give me everything. For example, this silver moon, didn’t you say it was given to you by your grandmother? How can you just give it away to someone else? In my opinion, it looks best on your hair.”

Zhan Yaoguang listened to her and took back the silver moon, but the hand holding the pearl was still stubbornly held up in front of her eyes: "Then you can keep this. I specially found it for you. If you don't accept it, I have nowhere else to put it."

Shu Fu was truly at a loss, so she had to make up an excuse: "If this bead were smaller, I would have accepted it, and I could use it to set a hairpin in the future. But it's so big, even if you give it to me, I don't know how to use it."

Zhan Yaoguang stood still, lost in thought. His gaze swept over her, then suddenly settled on the delicate toe of her shoe peeking out from under her skirt.

His eyes lit up: "How about we just inlay it on your embroidered shoes? Don't you Central Plains people have a story called 'every step a lotus flower'? Let's imitate it and make 'every step a ray of light', what do you think?" He got more and more excited as he spoke, until his eyes were bright and sparkling as he looked at her. "I'll give you this one first, and I'll find you another one later to make a pair. Please accept it, okay? I'm begging you."

Shu Fu's heart warmed little by little with the boy's innocent words. She couldn't bear to disappoint him again, so she agreed: "Then I'll treat you as someone I have here. Whenever you want to take it back, you can come and ask me for it again. Is that okay?"

He nodded, but a different thought was on his mind: what reason was there to ask for back what he had given away?

Then he thought: Now that she has something of his by her side, day after day, year after year, one day she will be able to get used to his presence completely.

After expressing his feelings again, Zhan Yaoguang was overjoyed. He reached out and hooked his arm around her thigh, pulling her down from the stool, which startled the girl, who cried out in surprise.

"So...do we count as a couple now? Will we get married in the future?" He looked up at her expectantly.

Shu Fu was so startled by his sudden embrace that her soul seemed to leave her body, and she lay prostrate in front of him, speechless for a moment.

Zhan Yaoguang thought she had pushed her too far again, and recalling that many of the older sisters and younger sisters in the clan believed that marriage was not only useless but also caused a lot of trouble, she assumed that she thought so too. So she quickly added, "It's okay, Afu, it's okay if you don't want to get married, as long as you want me..."

He paused abruptly, then looked at her warily: "You still want mine, don't you? I didn't disappoint you last night, did I?"

Shu Fu: "...Zhan Yaoguang, you're so noisy."

He calmed down for a while, then finally resigned himself to his fate and said, "Alright then, if Afu doesn't want me to be your husband, can't I be your mistress?"

"..."

———

The other room... um