When We Meet, Spring Blooms - Chapter 2

The young emperor wasn’t a bad person. He offered generously, “If you like dragon shrimp too, I’ll have the Weaving Bureau embroider them on your clothes.”

I waved both hands. “No, no. They’re your shrimp. I couldn’t take what you love.”

I didn’t understand, but I respected it.

Respect was as far as I could go, though. Nothing more.

He looked a little disappointed.

Was I supposed to tell him that if he wanted everyone to love his shrimp, the answer wasn’t brocade and silk? It was Sichuan peppercorns, cooking wine, and thirteen-spice seasoning.

We had talked for ages without drinking the ceremonial wedding wine.

I lifted my gourd cup and raised an eyebrow. Why did it smell of milk?

He scratched his head shyly. “I had them replace the wine with almond milk pudding.”

“I don’t know how to drink yet,” he added very quietly.

After our wedding wine—almond milk pudding—I began working out how to talk my way out of the wedding night.

“Your Majesty…” Look, the fifteenth-night moon is already full. Surely a full moon is enough for tonight—we don’t need a consummated marriage too.

Before I could get that out, he interrupted me.

Fresh from his pudding, the look in his eyes was almost milky-soft.

“We’re… we’re husband and wife now. Don’t call me Your Majesty.” He tugged awkwardly at the jeweled tassels by the bed.

“My name is Gu Shiyu. What’s yours?”

Probably everyone in the empire knew your name was Gu Shiyu.

“Li Wanyin,” I replied.

His eyes lit up. “What a coincidence! I have a puppy called Wanwan!”

Clueless. Completely clueless.

“He could finish two bowls of milk as soon as he was born, so I called him Wanwan. Bowl-Bowl.”

Oh. One bowl of milk for each “Wan.”

Gu Shiyu looked at me expectantly. “Do you want to meet Wanwan?”

“Now?”

“Not now! Wanwan’s asleep.”

He proceeded to make the arrangements himself. “We’ll see him tomorrow. Before that, we’ll stop in on the empress dowager.”

Something about that sounded wrong.

Granted, the dowager wasn’t your birth mother, she was governing from behind the curtain in what looked suspiciously like a power grab, and her family didn’t like you. Still… Never mind.

Mid-conversation, Gu Shiyu suddenly grew bashful.

He climbed onto the bed with an awkward little wriggle. “It’s late. We have to get up early to see Wanwan. Let’s go to bed.”

My head began to hurt.

“Your— ahem. Gu Shiyu, even though we’re married, there are plenty of things we’re not ready to do.”

He looked blank.

I pressed on. “Drinking, for example. You shouldn’t be drinking wine when you’re still at the milk-pudding age. By the same token, there are other things you shouldn’t do at the milk-pudding age. Understand?”

He looked as though he half understood.

Faced with this bewildered boy, I suddenly felt the urge to educate him. Sex education in Great Zhao was woefully lacking. If I didn’t teach him basic reproductive health, who would?

For the first two hours, we talked at cross-purposes. For the next two, I might as well have been talking to a wall.

In the end, we lay down and held hands.

“Oh,” he said. “So this is what they call performing the rites of the Duke of Zhou.”

“Fine,” I said. “It’s not as though you have to pass a high school entrance exam.”