Chapter 7 — Light as Down

Bui Tri Yen leaned weakly against the doorframe, his face drained of all color, his body trembling as if the very marrow had been sapped from his bones. The moment he caught sight of me, he collapsed into my arms, resting his weary head upon my shoulder. His voice was a mere phantom of a whisper:

“I knew… I knew you would come for me.”

At that exact moment, the Crown Prince arrived. Upon witnessing our embrace, his features contorted in a mask of sudden, frantic agitation.

“Why has Your Highness seen fit to mistreat my husband?” I demanded.

He scrambled to offer an explanation, his voice sharp with defensiveness:

“I have not mistreated him! I merely held him under house arrest. Every meal was provided; I never once denied him his sustenance.”

“And what crime has my husband committed to warrant such confinement?”

The Crown Prince sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping as he sank slowly onto a nearby seat. He looked at me, his eyes swirling with a tempest of complex emotions, before finally speaking:

“I only wanted him to dissolve this marriage with you.”

“I intended to bestow the Princess upon him.”

“But he would rather face death than yield, so I had no choice but to force him to submit.”

I stared at him, bewildered. I could not fathom why he was so obsessed with driving a wedge between me and Bui Tri Yen. Observing my confusion, the Prince sighed again and asked, “Did you once travel to Yangzhou?”

I gave a curt nod.

“And did you rescue a young master who had met with grave misfortune?”

“I did.”

“That man… was me.”

Years ago, I had indeed traveled to the riverside in Yangzhou. I had stumbled upon a young man lying in the mud, gasping his final breaths. Unable to witness such a tragedy, I had intervened to save him. He had promised then that he would one day repay my kindness, but he vanished into the ether, leaving no trace. I had searched for him for years until I finally convinced myself he had perished. The Crown Prince looked at me with a tenderness that bordered on agony, his voice rasping:

“When I first met your elder sister, I saw that her features bore a three-part resemblance to yours, so I mistook her for you.”

“It is the cruel hand of fate. During the selection of the consorts, you wore a veil; had it not been for that, we would not have passed each other by.”

I turned my head away, my voice cold and detached:

“What has passed is gone. It is simply that we were destined to meet but not to remain together.”

“I implore Your Highness: do not continue this entanglement. We each deserve to live our own lives.”

His eyes flickered between tenderness, stubborn refusal, and raw fury.

“And what if I refuse to let go?”

“Then I shall petition the Emperor,” I replied steadily. “I will inform him that the Crown Prince ignores the moral order and seeks to steal the wife of his own subject. I have also heard that the Emperor has recently been contemplating the replacement of the Crown Prince.”

His jaw tightened until the muscles stood out. His eyes were bloodshot with rage as he glared at me. Finally, he withdrew his hands and stepped aside, allowing us to depart. Once back at our estate, to prevent any further treachery, Bui Tri Yen penned a formal memorial to the Emperor that very night. Upon reading it, the Emperor was so consumed by fury that he shattered a porcelain cup, publicly rebuking the Crown Prince before the entire court. The Prince was forced to kneel outside the Imperial Study for an entire day. At first, he held his head high, insisting:

“My feelings for Su Kinh Nhu are genuine; I implore the Imperial Father to grant my wish.”

The Emperor gave a cold, mocking laugh.

“Grant your wish?”

“You want me to sanction your theft of a subject’s wife?”

“Have you no shred of shame left?”

The following day, the Crown Prince attempted a new strategy. He suggested that Su Nguyet Ngon be made a Secondary Consort while leaving the position of Primary Consort vacant for the time being, with matters to be resolved later. Upon hearing this, the Emperor grabbed an inkstone and hurled it directly at him. The black ink splattered across the Prince’s robes, staining his finery.

“How did I ever sire such a wretched creature as you?” the Emperor roared.

“A man has just married his wife, and you already seek to snatch her away as your Primary Consort.”

“And you intend to fill the position of Secondary Consort with her own elder sister!”

“Do you take me for a dim-witted tyrant?”

In the end, the Crown Prince was placed under house arrest within the Eastern Palace for three months, forbidden from stepping a foot outside the palace gates. News of this filtered back to the residence of the Duke of An. My elder sister, seemingly losing her mind, stormed directly into the Bui estate. I was in the midst of packing my belongings, preparing to join Bui Tri Yen for his new post in the South. She rushed into the room, sweeping everything off my vanity in a blind rage. Powder boxes shattered, and dust billowed into the air, coating the floor in a pale haze.

“Su Kinh Nhu! This is all your doing!”

Her eyes were rimmed with red, her fingernails digging so deeply into her palms that they drew blood.

“If you hadn't reported him, why would the Crown Prince be under house arrest? How could our marriage plans have been delayed?”

I stooped down, slowly gathering the unblemished jars of rouge, never once lifting my gaze to meet hers.

“Elder sister, have you ever stopped to think?”

“The Crown Prince chose you only because you bear a slight resemblance to me.”

She froze. I stood up, dusting the powder from my hands, and locked my gaze with hers.

“Back in Yangzhou, when the Crown Prince was in danger, it was I who saved him. For all these years, the person he has pined for has always been me.”

“After you returned to the capital, he mistook you for me because of your face.”

“If you did not possess this face, the Crown Prince would not have looked at you even once.”

My sister’s face turned deathly pale. Her lips trembled, but no words escaped her throat.

“You should be thanking me,” I said, my voice eerily calm.

“If I had not intervened to save him that day, you would not even possess the status of a Secondary Consort today.”

She stumbled backward as if struck by an invisible blade, her composure shattering. Tears streamed down her face. She covered her mouth with her hands and fled in a disheveled panic. Xuan La poked her head in from the doorway, whispering, “Mistress, the eldest daughter has run back to the Duke’s mansion in tears. The Duke and the Madam are in a towering rage.”

I remained indifferent. In a few days, we would be leaving the capital anyway. The petty dramas of the Su household would no longer have any claim over me. On the day of the traditional homecoming, I returned to the Duke’s estate according to protocol. My father and mother sat in the main hall, their faces as heavy and foreboding as the sky before a tempest.