Chapter 251 - Reminisce

Bian shifted slightly, turning his head just enough to catch his grandpa’s eye without drawing anyone else’s attention.Under the cover of golden light and domestic serenity, Bian’s lips moved silently, each word carved with venom.

"I hope you don’t say shit you shouldn’t."

Lin flinched ever so slightly, the lines of his weathered face twitching with discomfort. He gave a small, almost imperceptible nod. His hands tightened in his lap.

At the head of the table, the Emperor sat like a celestial being wrapped in sorrow. His long braids, threaded with gemstones that caught every flicker of light, had stilled. His graceful hands, which had not stopped moving since they sat—adjusting the curve of his goblet, the angle of his knife—finally stilled too.

He looked up.

Straight at Lin.

And with a voice stripped of grandeur, gentle and raw, he broke the silence.

"I don’t know how to begin," he said softly. "I’ve waited so long. I imagined it so many ways... but now, I find I cannot speak."

Lin slowly raised his gaze to meet the Emperor’s. He looked so out of place in this world of ethereal grace, wrapped in homespun cloth, his back slightly hunched from decades of labor. And yet, for a moment, the silence made him noble too.

"Thank you," the Emperor whispered. "Thank you... for taking care of my child. For loving him. For keeping him safe, when we failed to."

A few servants paused in their duties, glancing up. The boy beside Lin stilled, sensing the weight of the moment.

The Emperor’s next words came slower. As if they had to be torn from somewhere deep.

"I... wish to ask—" he swallowed—"how was he? How... is my son?"

The words hung suspended in air like fine glass.

Bian didn’t move.

But his jaw tightened.

Lin inhaled shakily. His eyes flitted once to Bian—just once—and then he answered. His voice cracked a little, but it was filled with something far older than pain.

"Jian..." he began, and already Bian’s hands began to tremble.

"Jian is a loving child," Lin said with a distant smile. "He loves flowers—especially the blue ones that grow near the riverbank. He loves to walk, to listen to the breeze, to collect odd stones he thinks are lucky."

Bian’s prosthetic hand gripped the table edge until a faint hiss came from its core. A warning of pressure build-up.

Lin continued, voice soft, reverent. "He smiles often. Smiles like he’s never been hurt. Like the world’s still beautiful to him. He loves apples—especially the small red ones. He waits for me to bring them back from the market and always pretends to be surprised, even when he’s not."

He gave a gentle chuckle, eyes glassy now. "He calls me ’grandpa’ like it’s the most sacred thing. He..."

"Enough," Bian whispered, but it was too quiet.

Lin looked down, almost ashamed of his smile.

But the Emperor looked radiant—eyes shining, chest rising in a breath that seemed to lift the weight of years off him. "He... he sounds just like her. My loving mate... she was a fierce nature enthusiast."

Bian’s vision pulsed, his head throbbing with white heat. It was as if someone had opened a book and begun writing him out of it, line by line.

Why?

Why Jian again?

Why did his name get spoken like a spell? Like something precious and holy?

Why was he—Bian, sitting right here, at the Emperor’s table, the Emperor’s son-in-law, the mate of the beloved Prince—being ignored?

Why wasn’t the story about him?

The metal in his fingers clicked under strain.

His tongue was bitter with words he could never say aloud.

He forced a smile, robotic, icy, and turned to Dican with a syrupy voice.

"I’m sorry," he said, lifting his napkin and dabbing at his lips. "Your father is so sweet. So emotional. It’s lovely."

Dican blinked, slightly thrown by the sudden shift, but he smiled faintly and touched Bian’s hand under the table.

Bian wanted to pull away.

But he didn’t.

He squeezed back—gently, lovingly. The perfect mate.

The little boy across the table tilted his head at Bian, squinting curiously.

"Brother Jian saved me too. He is the nicest!" Qungya murmured to Lin, oblivious to the ripple it sent through the air.

Bian turned slowly toward the child, teeth clamped behind his lips. His expression didn’t shift. Not even slightly.

Instead, he let out a soft chuckle.

"Children do say the cutest things," he said with a smile so warm it could melt glass.

The dishes continued to arrive one after another—bowls of nectar-poached roots, platters of glassfish glazed in violet oil, cloudfruit tarts and steaming seedbread. But for all the colour and richness on the table, Bian’s appetite had long fled. He sat stiffly, each shift of the silverware grating like sand in his ears.

The Emperor, however, looked utterly captivated. His chair leaned slightly forward now, his eyes fixed on Old Man Lin as though afraid the stories might vanish if he looked away.

"What was his favorite color?" he asked, with the tone of a father catching up on a lifetime he missed. "When he was a child, I mean. What did he love?"

Lin folded his hands neatly in his lap, his fingers still trembling slightly from earlier, but his expression gentled.

"Green," he said softly. "Bright, young green. Like the rice shoots when they first push up from the water. Or like the old quilt I stitched from river-dyed scraps. He’d wrap himself in that every winter—refused to part with it no matter how worn it got."

The Emperor smiled faintly, eyes glassy. "That sounds like him."

Encouraged, Lin went on. "He was a quiet child. So obedient. Almost too good. He’d wake up before me to sweep the yard. I’d find him trying to cook breakfast with a wooden stool stacked on a box just to reach the pan."

The boy beside him giggled. "Brother Jian can cook?"

Lin chuckled and nodded. "Oh He is an amazing cook. Everything he makes tastes delicious."

Bian watched them all.

Watched the way their faces warmed, as if they were huddling around the soft hearth of this old man’s memories.

"I’d send him to the orchard to pick fruit," Lin continued. "And most of the time, he’d come back with more scratches than pears. Always trying to climb too high." He shook his head fondly, then added with a small laugh, "That’s how he lost his baby teeth, actually. Fell straight from the peach tree. Face-first into the grass."

The Emperor laughed, startled and tender, a palm over his lips. "You’re kidding."

"Not at all," Lin grinned, though his eyes dimmed with the weight of recollection. "He didn’t cry. Just sat there stunned, spat out three teeth, and asked if they’d grow back before festival day."

A few of the courtiers nearby smiled softly. Even one of the stoic guards posted along the far columns let a grin slip.

"And school?" the Emperor asked next. "Was he good in school? Was he happy?"

The room quieted slightly.

Lin looked down.

For a long time, he didn’t answer. Then, with a breath that came heavier than before, he nodded slowly.

"Brilliant," he said quietly. "Not just good. He was brilliant. Top of every exam. Teachers adored him—he was polite, always listened, always stayed late to help tidy up. And he loved it. He’d read even after lights out—under the covers with a candle stub, till I caught him snoring with ash on his chin."

The Emperor’s throat moved, trying to swallow something that wouldn’t go down.

Lin’s voice turned fainter. "He wanted to learn everything. History, languages, physics. Said he wanted to build machines to help fix the village roads. Said he’d grow up and get me a better roof."

He paused, hand resting gently on the boy’s shoulder beside him.

"But he couldn’t finish," Lin said. "Because the Graylings came."

Silence fell.

Lin’s mouth tightened. "The world is in chaos now...."

Bian’s knuckles had long since gone white against the tablecloth. His gaze burned into his untouched soup like it was responsible for the knot in his stomach.

The stories felt like stones piling on his chest.

Every tale was a little monument to Jian—to his goodness, his gentleness, his shining, quiet light. Everyone around the table seemed to be leaning closer to that image, folding it in like a sacred relic.

And he—he—was right here. In flesh. Breathing. Clothed in the same face. The same eyes.

But not once had anyone asked—

What’s Bian’s favorite color?

Did Bian do well in school?

He blinked hard and looked up, finally forcing words past the thickness in his throat.

"Well," he said, his voice smooth and brittle like spun sugar, "it’s good to know he had such a beautiful life."

All heads turned to him.

He smiled at them, his expression perfect, gracious, unreadable.

"So many memories. So many stories. I almost feel like I was there."

He laughed lightly, delicately, and lifted his goblet as if to toast.

"To the past," he said.

And drank.