[Be sure to read on chichilations. Reposts are not allowed anywhere else, for any reason.]
Back inside the room, Jinzi doesn’t seem too happy as he takes a small pair of wick cutters and goes to snuff the lanterns. I tug at my robe to take it off as I talk. “What’s the matter? Was Jinfeng not listening to you?”
He gave a gloomy huff and said nothing, coming up to help me undress. I unfold my arms to make it easier for him to pull down my sleeves, complaining all the while, “Ah, today was so tiring. Are you not tired, Jinzi? You were riding a horse all day long! Hm, do you want me to give you a ma.s.sage?”
“Ma.s.sage?” He gives me a look. “You’ve learned medical acupuncture?”
I shake my head. “It’s more like some random pushing.” Have I not learned by now that having him teach me the names of acupoints leads to him pigging out on tofu?
He gave me another look, clearly getting a bit interested. “Okay.”
I have him take off his upper body garments and lay on his stomach on the bed. I gently press on the groove of his lower back right in the center of his spine. Ah, Jinzi’s back is my favorite, slender and pliable yet powerful, having lean and solid muscles, light bronze skin with a matching delicate texture… really makes one drool over it.
I used a slight amount of strength as I rubbed and kneaded his back, him laying there motionless. “Does it feel good?” I ask.
He lightly hums. “Do it harder,” he says mutedly.
His voice is different from how it normally is, a bit like a groan, issued from the hollow of his throat and ambiguous. I immediately feel as if there’s feathers tickling my heart, and my face slowly gets red.
I collect myself, concentrating on the ma.s.sage, and then say with steadiness, “Jinzi.”
“Mm?”
“Do you want, um… that?”
Hearing me say that, he instantly didn’t want my ma.s.sage, propping his upper body up and staring at me with big, astounded eyes. Us being together for however long and me never having initiated the funtime, it’s little wonder he’s surprised.
“Yes.” Pragmatists are pragmatists; he didn’t even bother to think about the reason why before giving his succinct reply. Reaching out and pulling me over, he kissed me while pushing me onto the bed, his hands feeling about my body with some particularly fiery enthusiasm.
I barely manage to escape a bit from the onslaught of his mouth, gasping out as I’m pressed up against his chest, “Wait, waitwait!”
“Why am I always the one out of the two of us to be on the bottom?” I ask him.
“You requested it yourself.”
I requested it myself?
I resist the urge to beat him up, tamping down my temper, and reason with him, “I only said it for that time, not for it to be like this late on. Well, even if I’m used to it now and it doesn’t hurt that much, aren’t you tired of me being underneath all the time?”
“No.” His answer is incomparably blunt.
I’m not going to defeat him.
Following a silent recitation of this sentence ten times, I keep my anger down with great difficulty, and say to him with a mild tone, “But I’m tired of it.”
He surveys me, the look in his eyes quite stern, and then he turned his head away disdainfully. “You don’t know how! So you won’t be good at being on top.”
……
What kind of att.i.tude is that?!
I’m very nearly p.i.s.sed the h.e.l.l off.
“If I don’t know how then I can only learn how!” I narrow my eyes, voice especially soft. Anyone who’s familiar with me knows that this is my warning sign.
Jinzi looked at me with some vigilance.
“Who’s on top isn’t really important,” I say with even patience, “yet you only being willing to do this to me and not being willing to reciprocate, inevitably makes me doubt your feelings towards me.”
He gazes at me skeptically. I force my eyes wider to clearly ill.u.s.trate within them my guileless, heartfelt words.
He continues to wordlessly watch me, evidently a bit hesitant. I promptly strike while the iron is hot and throw myself into his embrace. “How is it that I’m always going with your whims, yet you won’t even give me one chance to try it out?” My voice is melancholic with its complaint.
He embraced me, my hair rubbing against his bare chest. He finally, finally whispered, “Alright.”
Tonight, as a result, I was very afraid that the neighbors could hear the following sounds coming from our room:
……
“You don’t have to help me take it off! I’ll do it myself!”
……
“…Get the ointment first! It’s in that white satin bag! …Nevermind, I’ll get it!”
……
“…No! Not like that! …I’ll do it, alright? You just lay down…”
“No, I want to be on top.”
“Quit trying to act tough… slower, not like that… do what I usually do… good, go in slowly… mm…”
……
……
“You actually need to move!”
“I know!” I didn’t have so much trouble last time with Yuan Qingyun.
……
However many minutes later.
……
“…h.e.l.lo? …It’s my turn, lay down…”
“No! …Jinzi… I’m so tired… mn, I don’t want to today…”
“Too bad.”
“Jinzi… no, mmph-“
……
The outcome was that I still lost and only got one chance to try it out, while Jinzi consequently doubled his pleasure-demanding towards me…
[T/N: A gold star for your effort, Chuchu.]
I didn’t dare look at Zhou Zizhu the next morning. He’s staying right next door and likely heard our voices last night. Jinzi looks refreshed, giving off an unspeakable calm.
Hong Feng went to go pack up our luggage. Xiao Zhu took the congee delivered by the inn’s waiter and dished it out to everyone. Jinfeng actually took the initiative to help her carry the bowls, and I give him a very suspicious look.
When the congee was placed in front of Zhou Zizhu, that bald-headed old fellow used a silver needle to test for poison for him out of usual practice, ignoring us. I had seen him do this yesterday and thought it strange then, but we aren’t a generation of busybodies over here so no one said anything. I’m Jinfeng’s imaginary enemy and I won’t say anything to him, either.
Zhou Zizhu saw me looking at him and smiled. “My father had heard about that time we met with danger and specially called for him to look after me. He’s from my old dad’s home and has always been especially cautious.”
I nod with an ‘oh’ of affirmation. “I still don’t know how to address-“
“Ah-San.” Zhou Zizhu hadn’t yet opened his mouth when the baldy beat him to it. “Sir Zhang can call me Ah-San.” His wooden face is dark black.
I nod slightly, not continuing to speak.
Jinfeng put a bowl of congee in front of me. I’m naturally not stupid enough to eat it and carelessly take a pair of chopsticks to carelessly stir it a few times. Sure enough, some thin black lines slowly emerged from the glistening snow-white grains, and with another swish came up a long-legged, peanut-sized spider that had the misfortune to be burnt to death at the bottom of the bowl.
I’m not bothered at all, pushing the bowl back in front of the spider-murdered and saying indifferently, “I don’t want your specially-added ingredient.”
The little killer raised his chin and put on a look that said “I didn’t do it”, huffing from his nose.
Jinzi is sitting between me and Brother Zhou and therefore can’t see the bowl’s contents, but what couldn’t be understood from seeing the interaction between his younger brother and I? His face sinks, and he calls “Jinfeng!” before getting up and indicating for him to keep up.
Jinfeng dejectedly slunk out with his brother to have a talk, giving me a ferocious glare before he left.
Zhou Zizhu watched the two brothers leave with a bit of a lost expression. “Brother Zhang, for you to have a profound conversation with someone you barely know wouldn’t be strange. Yet Brother Zhang and Brother Yao seem to know each other well!”
I give him a lovely smile. “It’s true.”
“I heard you originally didn’t get on that well?”
“Ah… well, yes.” I smile again. “I’d been in a bad state of mind these past few years and my conduct was uncontrollably reckless, but that’s all over now.”
He shot me a deeply meaningful glance, one part completely understanding and one part unable to understand at all.
“I am not too familiar with Brother Yao, but I’ve heard that since he was a child, few people have gotten personally close to him. Is Brother Zhang not afraid of…”
“No, I’m not afraid,” I say gently.
Hearing my meaning, he smiles. “This lowly heart of mine doesn’t find that odd, Brother Zhang.”
We change the subject, both of us happening to have a tacit understanding on not bringing up the case we’re on the verge of meeting up with.
Jinzi entered not long after that with his usual expression, Jinfeng following after with dejection and extreme anger written on his face, and we continued on our journey.
The direct result of Jinzi’s talk with his little brother was the invocation of Jinfeng’s rebellious side. The dude won’t let go of any opportunity to harm me or play a prank. The next morning, for example, I got up and found a bunch of white-looking earwigs in my shoes, and after thinking it over, I put them into Jinzi’s shoes.
Due to that, I got to sit back and enjoying my first show of Jinzi giving Jinfeng a spanking, that formerly stubborn mule finally wailing loudly.
However, Jinfeng’s amicability with me has thusly dropped even more severely.
When we stopped for an inn on the evening of the third day, we found out this time that the biggest hotel in the city was already full up. As we were about to leave, a 30-something man with a slight, tidy mustache and long, sapphire-blue satin robes came out of the entrance and greeted us. “Sir, Sirs. My master has ordered me to hereupon serve you two Sirs. This lowly one has no other strengths other than being accustomed to attending the needs of higher ones. My master has already ordered me to put everything into order.”
Zhou Zizhu and I look at each other, rapidly communicating our mutual thoughts. I chuckle at the man. “Who is your ill.u.s.trious master? Wouldn’t bothering him like this be embarra.s.sing? We’re only a few common-cloth brothers coming out to travel and do business. For Esteemed Brother to call us Sir, perhaps he’s got the wrong people?”
The man stared blankly as I talked. I then smiled toward Zhou Zizhu, “Eldest Brother, since his master is so eagerly expecting us, wouldn’t it be mean of us to let him down, and better to thicken our faces and inconvenience him for a meal?”
Zhou Zizhu accompanied me in the act, saying impatiently, “You can’t get a reward you don’t deserve, Second Brother, don’t be greedy for piddly things. Now let’s go.” He pulls me away.
We leave the blue-changsam man behind us. The guy spooked me with his staring and staring, so we pretty much ran, but our whereabouts can be considered exposed at this point.
I’ll admit that the blame for this is on me for really showing off too much. It’d be strange if no one noticed such a gaudy, luxurious tour group. Yeesh, I’ve never traveled in this era before, and now I’ve overdone it in excitement!
The others are better. Zhou Zizhu’s baldy Ah-San is even more overtly suspicious of everything than Jinzi, and inspecting everything carefully still isn’t enough. It seems like he hates that he can’t just load his family’s Young Master into a safe container, cut off from the rest of the world, and put him on an express delivery to the disaster area.
bring On the fourth day, we ran across a relatively large tributary of the Yellow River and had to charter a ship down. Jinzi and that Ah-San madly do a background check on the boatman, only hiring him when they confirmed that the past 12 generations of his ancestors had been working as boatmen here. It’s more troublesome than a political investigation.
We bring both people and horses onto the boat.