Wanxiang could not persuade Yu Tingzheng, so with a few sighs, she stood up and entered the room to lay out the bedding and tidy up for Pei Qingyu.
Outside, Yu Tingzheng sat alone on the steps. He wiped his eyes, buried his head in his knees, and let his shoulders tremble slightly. Faint sounds of sobbing drifted through the night breeze.
Watching this, Pei Qingyu knit his brows and shouted angrily, “Yu Tingzheng! If you don’t bathe, you aren’t allowed on the bed!”
The person secretly shedding tears was startled and nearly jumped. He jerked his head toward the source of the voice and, seeing Pei Qingyu walking toward him, gripped the hem of his robes with helpless hands. “Yu… Yu’er…”
“Why are you crying again?” Seeing the boy cry twice in a single day made Pei Qingyu feel utterly frustrated. He stepped over, pulled a handkerchief from his robes, and haphazardly wiped the boy’s face. His movements were rough and overbearing; even a child raised in the countryside like Yu Tingzheng couldn’t help but let out a muffled whimper.
Once finished, Pei Qingyu stuffed the handkerchief into the boy’s hand. Seeing that Yu Tingzheng was unwilling to look at him, he frowned with displeasure. “Did I offend you?”
Yu Tingzheng turned his head away, his eyes rimmed with red and his lips pursed in silence.
“Since you were the one who wanted to sleep outside, why do you look so aggrieved?” Pei Qingyu forced the boy’s face back toward him. “It’s not as if I kicked you out, is it?”
Yu Tingzheng had been too startled to cry, but the reminder brought fresh tears to his eyes. “You don’t… like me… staying here…”
“When did I ever…” Pei Qingyu remembered what he had said in front of his parents and paused, changing his tune. “Even if I don’t like you living with me, I haven’t kicked you out.”
At the thought of it, he grew irritable again. “I didn’t kick you out, yet you decided to leave on your own. You certainly are ‘sensible’.”
Yu Tingzheng tried his best to hold back his tears. He stepped back and shook his head. “Since… you don’t like it, then I… I won’t disturb… you.”
“You,” Pei Qingyu coughed. “How can you be so…”
Before he could finish, the person in front of him trembled. Pei Qingyu was stifled for a long while, the words tumbling at the tip of his tongue before he finally looked away and muttered, “The two of us have signed a marriage contract. If you sleep outside like this and others find out, what will they think of the Pei family? What will they think of me?”
Yu Tingzheng hadn’t considered that, and once again, he forgot to cry.
Seeing his dazed expression, Pei Qingyu’s mood improved slightly. He tilted his chin up and glanced toward Auntie Wang’s house next door. “Hurry up and get inside. Who do you want to see you like this? Those who don’t know any better will think I’ve bullied you.”
The Wang family’s courtyard was separated from the Pei’s only by a low fence; one only had to look up to see the other’s yard. Yu Tingzheng followed his gaze and caught sight of a woman coming out with a basin to dump water. Before he could hide, she spotted him. They exchanged a few muffled words of small talk, but fortunately, the darkness prevented her from noticing anything unusual.
Now, Yu Tingzheng didn’t dare sleep outside any longer. He followed Pei Qingyu into the house. Pei Qingyu tossed out a final instruction “Bathe before getting into bed” and turned to go to the washroom.
Wanxiang was still in the room. Seeing Pei Qingyu leave, she said happily, “That’s wonderful! Master Yu doesn’t have to sleep outside.”
Just as she was about to say more, A-Tong appeared at the door, clearing his throat to say that the Madam was calling for her. The girl hurriedly took a lantern and left. A-Tong gave Yu Tingzheng a look and followed her, leaving Yu Tingzheng alone in the room.
After standing in a daze for a while, Yu Tingzheng’s gaze circled the room and landed on the small daybed by the window. His eyes slowly focused on it.
When Pei Qingyu returned from washing up, he immediately began searching for the boy the moment he stepped into the room. Yu Tingzheng wasn’t at the table reviewing his lessons, nor was he sleeping in the bed. Instead, he was half-lying on the daybed, his eyes quietly closed.
He had already fallen asleep. His eyes and nose were red, making him look quite pitiful.
Pei Qingyu stood before the daybed, hesitating for a long time. Finally, he gnashed his teeth, leaned down, and stripped Yu Tingzheng’s clothes until only his inner tunic remained. Then, he picked him up and carried him to the bed.
Yu Tingzheng was the first person to ever get onto his bed without washing properly. Then again, he thought, who else besides Yu Tingzheng had ever been on his bed?
Pei Qingyu stared at the boy’s sleeping face. The more he looked, the more “loathsome” he found him. He reached out and pinched the boy’s cheek. When Yu Tingzheng let out a muffled groan as if he were about to wake, Pei Qingyu immediately covered him with the quilt and patted it gently. Yu Tingzheng grew still once more.
The next day, remembering he had to go to the academy, Yu Tingzheng woke up early. He dragged his tired body out of bed. Closing his eyes in a groggy daze, he fumbled for his shoes. Halfway through putting them on, a thought suddenly struck him. His body froze and his eyes snapped open.
He remembered that he was supposed to have slept on the daybed last night. How did he end up in the bed?
Before he could figure it out, A-Tong knocked on the door, calling for the “Young Master and Master Yu” to wake up. After two calls, A-Tong pushed the door open, habitually sticking his head in first. Seeing that Yu Tingzheng was awake, he walked in with a sense of relief.
He then proceeded to wake his Young Master: “Young Master, it’s time to get up.”
The figure behind Yu Tingzheng moved irritably, looking as if he were about to hurl a pillow. Yu Tingzheng stopped putting on his shoes and quickly caught the pillow. “Yu’er… don’t hit anyone.”
Hearing his voice, Pei Qingyu opened his eyes, dropped the pillow, and struggled to sit up. At this sight, A-Tong smiled and breathed a secret sigh of relief. As expected, with Master Yu around, he wouldn’t get hit by a pillow.
On the way to the academy, Yu Tingzheng hesitated for a long time before finally asking the question weighing on his heart: “Last night… was it Yu’er… who carried me… back to the bed?”
“Hmph! How could I have the strength to carry you?” Pei Qingyu flatly denied it. “You must have climbed into bed yourself while dreaming.”
“Huh?” Yu Tingzheng’s eyes widened. He couldn’t believe he would dream of climbing into bed. In all these years, he had never once climbed into Yu Chengfeng’s bed.
Pei Qingyu didn’t want to explain further and turned the boy’s face forward. “Watch the road.”
For the rest of the walk, Yu Tingzheng was plagued by annoyance at his “sleepwalking,” while also stealing secret glances at the person beside him. Pei Qingyu didn’t seem angry. He didn’t hate the fact that Yu Tingzheng had climbed into his bed.
But I didn’t bathe last night
Yu Tingzheng felt a chill run down his spine, just as Pei Qingyu grabbed him by the back of his collar. “Yu Tingzheng, if you ever fail to bathe again, I really won’t let you on the bed.”
As if his mind had been read, Yu Tingzheng shrank his neck in fear and nodded frantically, promising to keep himself spotlessly clean in the future.
“That’s more like it,” Pei Qingyu said, letting him go. “I prefer cleanliness. To be my ‘bedside companion,’ you cannot be filthy.”
Filthy? Yu Tingzheng thought to himself that he was much cleaner now that he was at the Pei house; he didn’t have to work in the fields every day. In the past, he wasn’t just filthy, he was downright smelly. However, he didn’t dare mention this to Pei Qingyu, fearing he would be met with even more disdain.
While agreeing obediently, he thought privately that he no longer had to worry about having a place to sleep.
The annual examinations included both a written portion and a horse-archery portion. Pei Qingyu ignored both. Yu Tingzheng, on the other hand, was clumsy but diligent. He managed to write a total of nine characters, which the teacher found completely illegible. During the horse-archery exam, just as he had painfully struggled onto the horse’s back, an arrow struck him from behind, nearly knocking him off.
The arrow had no metal tip; its head was wrapped in cloth and stuffed with sawdust. Although it was soft, it still stung upon impact especially since the archer had clearly used a great deal of force.
Yu Tingzheng steadied himself and turned his head in a panic. Through the crowd of people and horses, his eyes met a pair of cold, sinister eyes in the distance.