Chapter 2: Closer Than a Servant
The second time he was summoned to the library, no servant came to fetch him.
Instead, the side door to the small courtyard opened, and Xue Qinghe stepped in personally.
He looked too elegant for the narrow stone path and half-dead potted herbs by the wall. White robes, gold trim, jade belt, every inch the gentle crown prince of Heaven Dou.
But the moment the attendants behind him stopped at the gate, his eyes shifted past the prince softness into something far more familiar.
"There you are," he said.
As though he had only stepped out briefly and returned to find something that belonged where he had left it.
Then Renyu set down the wooden toy he had been pretending to carve and rose at once.
"Your Highness."
Xue Qinghe glanced at the toy, then at his hands. "You hold the knife wrong."
He blinked.
The prince stepped closer, took the small carving knife from his fingers, and turned it lightly before handing it back.
"This way. Or you'll cut your palm."
The motion was smooth and natural.
Too natural.
Not the sort of thing a crown prince would do for an ordinary servant child.
Not even for a favored one.
The gate attendants kept their eyes lowered, but he could feel their shock like heat in the air.
Xue Qinghe either did not notice or did not care.
"Come," he said. "You're late."
The walk back to the library was quiet, but not the brittle kind of quiet from before. This one had a rhythm to it. Familiar steps. Measured breathing. A silence shared often enough that neither needed to fill it.
At the library door, Xue Qinghe dismissed everyone.
"No one enters unless I call."
"Yes, Your Highness."
The doors closed.
The click of wood settling into place seemed to change him.
Not completely. He was still Xue Qinghe, still elegant, still impossible to read at a glance. But the distance softened.
When he turned, his gaze fell first on the Renyu sleeve.
"You stained it with ink yesterday, look like you wash it."
"…Yes, you highness."
He did not know how to answer that.
Qian Renxue—Xue Qinghe—crossed the room and sat, not behind the main desk this time, but at the long low table by the window.
"Come here."
He obeyed.
There were already books laid out in two neat stacks. One was for him. One for the prince.
He looked at the arrangement, then at the empty cushion beside Xue Qinghe.
Not across.
Beside.
His eyes lifted.
Xue Qinghe raised a brow. "Must I repeat myself?"
He sat.
Carefully. Quietly. Still not quite trusting it.
The prince opened a book, turned two pages, and placed one finger beneath a line of text.
"Read."
He began.
At first he read with deliberate caution, sounding out the characters slowly enough to suit his apparent age. But halfway through the passage, a word appeared twice in different compounds, and he corrected his own pace without thinking.
When he finished, Xue Qinghe did not speak at once.
He only reached over, took the book, and turned to another page.
"This one."
He read again.
Then another.
Then another.
By the fourth passage, the room had gone quiet except for his voice and the soft rustle of pages.
When he finished at last, Xue Qinghe leaned back slightly and studied him with that infuriatingly calm gaze.
"It look like you've been holding back while reading this ."
It was not a question. Seeing how clumsy he act make her felt looking at this cute creature.
He kept his eyes on the page. "A little."
"A little," Xue Qinghe repeated.
His tone was dry enough to make him glance up.
The prince was amused.
Not angry. Not suspicious.
Amused.
That was somehow seem worse.
Xue Qinghe lifted one hand and, before he could react, tapped lightly between his brows.
A tiny gesture. Almost lazy.
But intimate in a way that made his whole body go still.
"At least lie properly," the prince said. "You are terrible at pretending to be dull."
He stared.
The prince lips curved, just barely. "There. That face again."
"What face?"
"The one that says, 'How much do you know?'"
He closed his mouth.
Qian Renxue smile deepened by a hair.
Then, just as quickly, it faded into something quieter.
"I know enough," he said. "Enough to see that you are strange. Enough to know you have been careful about it. Enough to understand that you were watching me before I started watching you."
Renyu fingers tightened in his lap.
Xue Qinghe noticed that too, of course.
But instead of pressing, he reached for the teapot nearby and poured warm water into a small cup.
He set it down in front of him.
"Drink," he said. "Your throat should has been feeling dry."
That was the moment Renyu truly felt it.
Not danger.
Not scrutiny.
Just a memory.
A flash of soft sleeves. Warm hands. The faint scent of incense. Being small enough to be carried. A calm female voice that only sometimes let warmth show. The strange, impossible security of knowing that the person holding him was dangerous to everyone else, but not to him.
His fingers hesitated over the cup.
Xue Qinghe saw that too.
For the first time since entering the library, the prince expression changed in a way that was difficult to name.
Not softness.
Something more controlled than that.
Something older.
"You remember," he said quietly.
The protagonist looked up too fast.
That was answer enough.
For a brief second, neither of them moved.
Then Xue Qinghe exhaled through his nose, very faintly.
"I thought so."
The words were low. Not meant for attendants. Not meant for the crown prince. Only for the two of them, alone in the sunlit library.
He gripped the cup. "You knew?"
"I suspected."
"Since when?"
"Since you were a baby. Not many baby stare that much except there some problem with their brain or there just something special about them."
That should not have been funny.
And yet, against all reason, it was.
A tiny sound escaped him before he could stop it—not quite a laugh, but close. As he felt foolish.
Xue Qinghe eyes softened with unmistakable satisfaction, as though he had won something.
"There," he said. "That is better."
Renyu lowered his gaze at once, suddenly aware of himself in a way he disliked.
This body was four years old.
His mind was not.
There were far too many things about that combination that became loose under prolonged attention.
But Xue Qinghe did not use the opening to pry deeper. He only rested one elbow on the table and watched him over loosely folded fingers.
"When I disappeared," he said, "you acted very well. Or as a child you're able to tell the similarities."
The protagonist head lifted.
The prince's expression remained mild.
"You cried in front of the nurses. Refused food for half a day. Clung to the first robe I wore as Xue Qinghe. Then adjusted just quickly enough for no one to question it." His tone turned thoughtful. "At the time, I found that very interesting."
Renyu felt a chill.
"You were testing me?"
"I was watching you." A pause. "There is a difference."
That answer was somehow more honest than a denial.
Xue Qinghe looked out the window, where afternoon light was beginning to mellow across the courtyard stones.
"I had no intention of leaving you to the palace servants," he said. "Whether you understood or not."
The simplicity of it caught him off guard.
He had expected calculation. Utility. Some elegant half-truth.
Instead, that.
He said slowly, "Then why put me with the servant children?"
"Because I was not yet secure enough to keep you closer." Xue Qinghe turned back to him. "And because if I favored you too early, others would have noticed too much."
That was true.
Painfully true.
In a palace, protection seen too clearly became a target painted in red.
Still…
"You still watched over me."
Xue Qinghe gave him a look that might, in another person, have been called dry affection.
"Of course I will watched over you. You're the kid that I found."
Renxue now really sure that the kid in front of him really has high intelligence. It can be said to be a genius. He can even act but clumsily. Showing the childishness of a kid.
However clumsy this kid, she knows that the kid that she raise really has high intelligence. The way that he read the book and interest truly different from ordinary kids.
Renyu lowered his eyes to the cup again.
Warm water. Not tea. Because tea would be too bitter for a four-year-old.
A trivial detail.
He had not decided what to do. He only know that he want to survive in this world.
"You are quiet today," Xue Qinghe said.
"I'm just thinking."
This time he did laugh foolisy, very slightly. While rubbing the back of his head.
The prince hand moved before he could brace for it.
Long fingers settled briefly on top of his head.
A pat.
No, not a pat.
A smooth, absent-minded stroke, as if this had once been ordinary between them and some part of Xue Qinghe had done it without permission from the rest.
Both of them froze.
The prince withdrew his hand first.
His face was composed when he spoke again, but the pause had already betrayed him.
"It seems," he said evenly, "that I have not entirely adjusted either."
The protagonist did not know where to look.
At last, he chose honesty.
"A little," he said.
Xue Qinghe glanced at him.
Then he laughed.
Actually laughed.
Not loudly, not for long, but enough that the room changed with it.
Enough that the library felt less like a prince chamber and more like a hidden place where the two of them were allowed to be something closer to themselves.
When the laughter faded, Xue Qinghe reached for the stack of books again.
"Very well," he said. "Since we understand each other better now, let us set the rules properly."
The protagonist straightened.
"In public, you will still call me 'Your Highness.' You will bow when others are present. You will never behave too familiarly outside these rooms."
He nodded.
"In private, you may speak more freely. Not foolishly," Xue Qinghe added. "Freely."
He nodded again.
The prince gaze sharpened, but the warmth underneath it remained.
"You are under my protection. Remember that first." He paused. "And remember the second part as well."
"What second part?"
Xue Qinghe smile returned, slow and dangerous and somehow still comforting.
"That because you are under my protection, you are also under my control."
There it was.
The real shape of it.
Not mother. Not sister. Not master in the ordinary sense.
Qian Renxue version of closeness was possession with privileges.
A cage, yes.
But one with her own hands on the lock.
Strangely, he did not mind as much as he should have.
Perhaps because he had known it since infancy.
Perhaps because the world outside those hands was worse.
"Do you understand?" Xue Qinghe asked.
"Yes."
"Good."
The prince pushed one of the thinner books toward him.
"Then start from here. And stop pretending you need as much help as ordinary children. It wastes both our time."
He opened the book and flipped through the pages.
After a moment, he said, "You arranged these by difficulty."
"Yes."
"And this one is missing pages."
"I removed them."
He looked up.
Xue Qinghe rested his chin lightly on one hand. "Why hand you material I have not checked first?"
The answer came without thinking.
"Because you're careful."
The prince held his gaze.
Then, very quietly: "Yes."
No modesty. No false denial.
Just truth.
A careful person. A dangerous person. A person who had found him in a ditch as a baby and, for reasons still unclear even now, had kept him.
The afternoon passed differently after that.
Not as prince and servant.
Not entirely.
He read aloud. Xue Qinghe corrected pronunciation. When he wrote a character too carelessly, the prince took his wrist and adjusted the angle of the brush with patient precision. When he frowned too long at a line of old court script, Xue Qinghe explained it without mockery. Once, when he drifted closer without noticing while trying to see a passage, the prince simply shifted the book so they could read it together.
At some point, fruit and pastries were brought to the outer room and left without interruption.
Xue Qinghe rose to fetch them personally rather than calling anyone inside.
He returned with a plate, set it between them, and—without comment—broke the sweeter pastry in half before handing him the smaller piece.
It was the sort of habit that came only from repetition.
From prior knowledge.
From remembering what a child liked to eat.
He accepted it in silence.
Xue Qinghe noticed that too.
But instead of speaking, he only took up his own book and let the silence settle around them again.
Easy.
Natural.
As though, beneath the false identity, the years between one and four had not been lost completely.
As dusk deepened and the first lamp was lit, Xue Qinghe finally closed the last book.
"That is enough for today."
Renyu nodded and started to rise.
"Not there," the prince said.
He blinked.
Xue Qinghe pointed, not toward the servants wing, but toward the side corridor adjoining his own residence.
"Your room has been moved."
He went still.
The prince tone remained light, but there was no room in it for refusal.
"You will stay closer from now on. It is inconvenient to have to fetch you from the outer quarters, and I dislike inconvenience."
That was the reason he offered.
It was not the real one.
Both of them knew it.
Still, Renyu bowed his head. "Yes, Your Highness."
Xue Qinghe stood and, as he passed, adjusted the crooked fold of his collar with one practiced motion.
"No, when we're alone. You can call me sister."
Again, too natural.
Again, impossible to mistake.
When he spoke, his voice was low enough that no attendant outside could have heard it.
"You have done well," he said.
The words landed harder than they should have.
Perhaps because praise from Qian Renxue was never casual.
Perhaps because some small, embarrassing part of him had wanted it.
He looked up.
For a moment, the prince mask thinned just enough for him to glimpse the woman beneath it—the one who had found him, kept him, tested him, and now, despite every reason not to, was drawing him closer again.
Then the mask settled back into place.
"Come," Xue Qinghe said. "Don't make me repeat myself twice in one day."
This time, when Renyu followed him out of the library, the distance between them was only half a step.
That was where he walked all the way back.
And neither of them corrected it.