The emperor stood. Swung his sleeves. Departed with the ceremony his exit required.
Shen Yao waited until most of the ministers had left then walked out of the main hall into the open air with the focused intention of a man who had survived something and intended to document it later.
That, he thought, breathing in the fresh morning air with something close to relief of having finished something painful, was not just torture. That was a whole new category of torture for which there is currently no adequate word.
Shareholder meetings had been long. They had been tedious. They had involved men with too much confidence in their own opinions and not enough evidence to support them.
But shareholder meetings had coffee hot warm caffeine
Shen Yao, he told himself, you spent fifteen years building a company from a respectable family business into one of the largest conglomerates in the country. You attended eight-hour board sessions and survived. You can handle ancient imperial court.
He paused.
Though you could handle it better with coffee.
He followed the path he'd come in on — or what he believed was the path he'd come in on — and walked with purpose through a series of corridors that seemed entirely cooperative until they weren't he turned looked around in confusion.
The rose bushes appeared.
He stopped.
He looked at them.
I've seen this before.
He turned. Tried again. The stone beneath his feet was even and pale and deeply unhelpful. The corridors branched and curved with the architectural confidence of a place that had never needed to make itself easy to navigate because everyone who mattered already knew the way and unfortunately, he wasn't in that category
The rose bushes appeared again.
Shen Yao stood in front of them for a moment.
How large, he thought with genuine disbelief, is this place.
A third pass. The roses. Again.
His lip twitched.
Fine.
He turned to the tree a few feet from the bushes for the umpth time since he passed this rose bush and sighed like a defeated man, he actually felt that since he came to this world he has sighed more times than he can count.
"Are you going to help me," he said to the apparently empty air around him, "or are you planning to watch the show a little longer?"
The empty air offered no response.
This continued for what felt like an entirely unreasonable length of time.
Then the tree next to him laughed.
It was a real laugh — unguarded, genuinely amused — and it came from somewhere in between the branches above his head. A moment later a figure dropped from the tree with the kind of effortless light fall that came from someone who had been climbing things since they could remember
He landed lightly. Straightened. Smiled.
Pei Shu.
Roughly Shen Yao's age or maybe older — perhaps the same year, perhaps a season different. Broad-shouldered with the contained energy of someone who moved through the world with the ease of a person comfortable in their own body. Black hair falling to his shoulders. The kind of face that people described as heroic because they couldn't find a more specific word for the particular combination of features that made strangers instinctively trust him.
And currently wearing the expression of someone who had been having a very good time at Shen Yao's expense.
"Young Master Shen." He pulled his hair back arranging his face into something approaching solemnity. "How could you say I find your predicament funny?"
Shen Yao felt a throb behind his left temple he instinctively rubbed his temple like it was instinct maybe his maybe the original's no one knew
I noticed him, he thought, the second time I found the roses a pest if I was to say so I chose to ignore him because I assumed he would eventually do something useful.
He revised his own thoughts.
"It would be more convincing," he said, "without the smile you know."
Xin Shu's attempt at solemnity lasted approximately one more second.
Then he laughed again — open and uncalculated, the laugh of someone who didn't spend much energy on performance — and stepped forward.
"All right you're really funny and for that I'll do you a favor," he said, still smiling, and turned toward the correct path with the comfortable ease of someone who had never been lost here in his life.
Shen Yao followed but internally he was wondering if he could kick this annoying guy away, but after all he was the one currently at a disadvantage, so he followed a step behind him calmly.
Meanwhile Xi Shu was at the gate waiting if there wasn't a rule that unauthorized personnel weren't allowed in the palace, he would have long ran in to search for his young master who was taking way too long to get out.
A few turns later, Shen Yao saw him before Xi Shu saw them — standing with the barely-contained energy of a person who had been managing a significant amount of worry for an extended period and had run out of productive things to do with it. His eyes were moving across the palace entrance with the systematic desperation of someone who had already checked every visible option and was beginning to reassess his assumptions about visibility.
Then he saw his young master.
The relief that crossed his face was immediate and total and slightly embarrassing in its completeness. He moved forward—
Pei Shu spoke first.
"Xi Shu." He smiled — bright, uncomplicated, the smile of someone who knew exactly what effect it would have. "Since we're heading the same way, shall we travel together?"
Xi Shu stopped.
He looked at Pei Shu.
then Shen Yao.
then back at Pei Shu.
His eyes widened to a diameter that suggested his face had run out of adequate room for them.
These two, he thought. Together. Talking. As if it's normal. As if this happens.
Something in his expression curdled in the specific way of someone who has just received information that conflicts violently with everything they understood about the established order of the world because it did no one was clearer about their relationship than him.
Pei Shu's smile widened looking as if he was enjoying this way too much than he let on
"Do you agree, Brother?" He turned to Shen Yao.
Xi Shu made a sound that was not quite a word.
Shen Yao glanced at him with the mild curiosity of someone observing a phenomenon they couldn't immediately classify.
Is he all right, he thought. He looks like he's swallowed something bad .
"Mhm," he said.
Xi Shu choked on the air he was breathing.
Pei Shu slung one arm around Shen Yao's shoulders with the easy familiarity of someone who had apparently decided they were already friends and was simply allowing the formality of the decision to catch up.
"Let's go then."
They walked or more like Pei Shu forced Shen Yao to walk forward
Behind them Xi Shu stood for one more moment, staring at the two of them — at the arm around his young master's shoulders, at the complete absence of the sub-zero temperature that normally accompanied anyone getting within arm's reach of Shen Yao — and tried to locate a framework in which any of this made sense.
He found nothing but his situation didn't last long because the next second Shen Yao shoved this annoying guy's grabby arm off himself with a disgust that had been calculated from years of dealing with people of different kinds. He glanced at Pei Shu in disgust them moved forward dusting his shoulder habitually
Xi Shu cheered happily internally as he followed behind them if the young master doesn't even allow him to stand within his arm's length why should someone else
"hphm he deserved it " he thought dashing forward to catch up
Meanwhile in the eaves of the palace walls a shadow stood watching everything once they left, he turned and jumped off the palace walls disappearing with in the shadows of the walls.