Eunuch Su’s face was wreathed in smiles as he lifted the red silk covers from the tray one by one.
Lin Yao had expected to see blinding gold, jade, and luminous pearls—but what she got was—
The first plate: a dish of delicate, bite-sized osmanthus cakes, still steaming.
The second plate: a bowl of crystal-clear green grapes, chilled over ice.
The third plate: a sliced golden-threaded honey melon, exuding a rich, sweet fragrance.
And the last plate—the most absurd of all—was a set of colorful shadow-puppet figurines carved from cowhide.
What was the meaning of this? Was he trying to fob off a beggar?
The Crown Prince, for all his talk of “generous thanks,” sent a few plates of fruit and pastries and some broken toys?
“Is this how the royal family humiliates people?” Lin Yao’s temper flared instantly.
Seeing the eunuchs set down their things and prepare to leave, she lunged forward, grabbed Eunuch Su by the collar, and glared at him fiercely. “Stop! Who said you could leave?!”
As she spoke, as if to verify something, she snatched a piece of osmanthus cake from the plate, broke it open, and sniffed it. No almond scent. So she said, “And this osmanthus cake! Last time, you disposed of it before I even woke up. Today, with everyone watching, I’d like to see how many more times the Crown Prince tries to poison me!”
Before her words even faded, she opened her mouth and took a vicious, huge bite!
“Lin Yao!!”
Chu Liyuan’s face changed drastically beside her. He didn’t have time to think—he lunged forward in one step, grabbed Lin Yao’s jaw with one hand, and roughly shoved his other hand into her mouth to pry out what she was chewing. “Spit it out! Are you out of your mind?! You know that’s from the Crown Prince! What if it’s poisoned…”
His voice was trembling. Those eyes, always filled with menace, were now flooded with sheer terror.
But the anticipated lethal poison never came.
The osmanthus cake melted in Lin Yao’s mouth.
Soft, sticky, delicately sweet, carrying a rich osmanthus fragrance—it dissolved on the tongue, sweet without being cloying. This was the craftsmanship of only the finest pastry chef in the capital.
The courtyard fell into dead silence.
Everyone watched as Lin Yao, cheeks puffed full, crumbs of osmanthus sugar clinging to the corner of her mouth, awkwardly stopped chewing.
Not poisoned… Not only not poisoned, but actually quite delicious.
Lin Yao silently swallowed the bite, slapped away Chu Liyuan’s hand still gripping her chin, wiped her mouth haphazardly, and tried to salvage some dignity: “Ahem… What does the Crown Prince mean by this? Sending me leftovers meant for children to mock me?”
Eunuch Su, whose collar had been yanked askew, finally straightened his attire and took a deep breath. “Miss Lin misunderstands. These… are all things His Highness remembers you loved as a child.”
“The grapes and honey melon are tributes from the Western Barbarian Kingdom, brought from afar. In all of Great Chu, aside from His Majesty, Her Majesty the Empress, and the Grand Empress Dowager, you are the only one to receive them… And the shadow puppets—His Highness personally drew the designs and had them carved.”
With that, Eunuch Su stepped back and bowed deeply to Lin Yao. “His Highness instructed me to convey a message to you—”
“Perhaps the pale goddess knows no sorrow, yet the jade toad is cold and the osmanthus stands alone.”
Eunuch Su finished, looking at Lin Yao with eager expectation, as if waiting for her reaction.
Lin Yao blinked. As a PhD in engineering who had studied in America, her classical Chinese proficiency was limited to her high school textbooks. She could vaguely grasp phrases like “riding a bamboo horse” or “the moon of old times,” but what goose was this “su e”? And what did “yu can” mean?!
She turned to Chu Liyuan with a bewildered expression and whispered, “What does that mean? Is he insulting me?”
Chu Liyuan didn’t answer immediately.
He understood. He understood every single word.
Su’e was Chang’e, the lonely woman trapped in the moon palace. “Osmanthus stands alone” meant she had no one by her side.
The Crown Prince was saying—he felt for her.
And Chu Liyuan was standing right here. She clearly had someone beside her, yet the Crown Prince called her “alone.”
That word was like a fine needle, pricking somewhere he couldn’t quite name. Not exactly painful—just suffocating.
He cast a cold glance at those “heartfelt” gifts. These were no ordinary thanks. These were gifts steeped in warmth and memory, each one a glaring declaration that the Crown Prince and Lin Yao were old acquaintances!
Lin Yao might not know, but the Western Barbarian tribute of green grapes and golden-threaded honey melons—only a few baskets arrived each year. Aside from the Emperor, the Grand Empress Dowager, and the Empress, even the favored Imperial Noble Consort rarely got a taste.
And the Crown Prince had brought them all to her.
Then there were those shadow puppets—drawn by the Crown Prince’s own hand.
His own hand!
The heir apparent, with a thousand affairs awaiting his attention, had found the leisure to pick up a brush and draw little figures for her, stroke by stroke.
Chu Liyuan’s gaze involuntarily fell upon the crooked wooden hairpin atop Lin Yao’s head.
He sent tributes, imperial brushwork. What did he send?
A wooden stick that passed for a chopstick.
An inexplicable frustration rose from his chest to his throat, making even his breathing feel labored.
He suddenly felt superfluous standing in this courtyard—like an outsider who had stumbled into someone else’s memories.
He let out a snort through his nose. “His meaning is that you should eat less honeydew melon. Eat too much, and you’ll get diarrhea.”
Eunuch Su: “…??”
Chu Liyuan didn’t look at the trays again, nor did he look at the crooked wooden hairpin atop Lin Yao’s head. He only felt that the air in this courtyard had suddenly become stifling and cramped—one more moment here and he could hardly breathe.
“Alright, the gifts have been received. Eunuch Su still needs to return and report back.” His tone was cold and hard. With a flick of his long sleeve, he turned and strode out.
His steps were fast and heavy, as if he were wrestling with something.
As he passed Eunuch Su, he stopped abruptly and turned his head. Those sinister, gloomy eyes churned with a dark undercurrent even he himself couldn’t name.
“Pass a message to my imperial brother—”
He lowered his voice, each word deliberate: “From now on, spend less thought on my consort.”
Eunuch Su was pinned in place by that gaze, a cold sweat seeping down his back.
Chu Liyuan didn’t look at him again. He strode out through the courtyard gate without looking back.
At that moment, in the study of the Eastern Palace, Chu Huaian sat upright before his desk, an unread memorial in his hand, but his gaze rested on the window.
He was waiting for Eunuch Su to return.
Those things had been prepared long ago—osmanthus cakes, green grapes, golden-thread honeydew melon, shadow-puppet figurines. None of them had been chosen at random.
Of course he knew Chu Liyuan was at Jingyou Pavilion. He had been waiting these past few days, waiting for a time when Chu Liyuan would also be there, so he could have Eunuch Su deliver the gifts.
The gifts were a pretext; the real intent was to strike the mountain to shake the tiger.
He wanted Chu Liyuan to know that he, Chu Huaian, knew a Lin Yao that Chu Liyuan would never know.
The osmanthus cakes were what A-Yao had snuck and eaten in his palace when she was eight—she’d wolfed down five in one go and been chased around the entire courtyard by the governess.
The shadow puppets were her favorite too. Whenever there was a shadow-puppet performance at a palace banquet, she’d watch utterly entranced, and even after it ended she’d refuse to leave, insisting on touching the little figures. He’d later learned to draw a few designs himself. But before he’d had the chance to give them to her, she never came again.
As for the grapes and the melon—those went back even further.
That year, he was eight. The Western Fan Kingdom had come to Great Chu on a diplomatic visit.
Young as he was, he’d spoken eloquently at the state banquet, drawing the foreign envoys’ frequent glances. His imperial father was so pleased that he specially bestowed upon him the Western Fan tribute fruits from the imperial table.
When he carried those clusters of grapes and the melon back to the Eastern Palace, little A-Yao happened to have come looking for him to play.
The two children sat cross-legged on the stone steps. She stuffed grapes into her mouth while clutching a piece of melon in each hand, cheeks puffed full, mumbling indistinctly: “Huaian-gege! This is so delicious!”
Juice dripped down her fingers onto her skirt, and she didn’t even notice.
He watched her laugh with such joy, and a feeling welled up in his chest—a satisfaction even his eight-year-old self couldn’t quite articulate.
“If you love it, I’ll save some for you every year.”
He said those words with utter seriousness, as if making a monumental vow.
But imperial tribute was hardly easy to come by. Even for the Crown Prince, it wasn’t available every year.
So from then on, whenever the season for Western Fan tribute arrived, the little Crown Prince studied with extra diligence—memorizing more policy essays, practicing more calligraphy copies, gritting his teeth and running extra laps in archery and riding lessons.
When his imperial father was pleased and ready to bestow rewards, other princes asked for jade ornaments and fine horses. He asked for nothing.
“Your son only wishes for a few clusters of grapes and a few honeydew melons.”
All the court officials praised the Crown Prince for his detachment from desire and disdain for extravagance—possessing the bearing of a heir apparent at such a young age.
No one knew where those fruits ultimately went.
Later, A-Yao stopped coming, but grapes and melons became his “preference.”
Year after year, everyone in the palace assumed the Crown Prince had a particular fondness for those two things. Whenever tribute arrived in the capital, someone would always deliver them to the Eastern Palace without delay.
Chu Huaian never explained. He accepted them all.
But those fruits sat on his desk year after year, and he rarely touched them. In the end, most were given to servants, or quietly rotted in the fruit bowls.
It wasn’t that he loved eating them. He was waiting for someone to come back and eat them.
He had waited eight years.
After everyone had left, Jingyou Pavilion fell quiet once more.
Lin Yao stared at the plates of tribute on the table, her brow furrowing deeper and deeper.
That Crown Prince was nothing like the straightforward Chu Liyuan. This man had more schemes than a sieve had holes. His gifts weren’t so easy to accept.
Nothing out of the ordinary happens without a reason! Thinking back to those pastries earlier… could there be something fishy hidden in these fruits?
So she picked up a small knife, suspicion written all over her face, and pulled the fragrant golden-thread honeydew melon in front of her.
Holding her breath, she carefully traced along the grain, cutting the melon open bit by bit… With a soft crack, the melon split in two, and Lin Yao’s pupils suddenly dilated.