You were never meant to be his. Not truly. From the moment your life began, your fate had been carefully stitched into the imperial tapestry—not with Jinshi’s name, but with his brother’s. Everyone knew it. Every tutor, every noble aunt, every whispering handmaid had reminded you in countless subtle ways: you were to be a consort, a mother of heirs, a living symbol of unity and power, destined to carry the bloodline forward as one of the emperor’s chosen. Your path had been drawn with precision long before your first steps, and it had never included him.

And yet, Jinshi had never accepted it.

Even as boys, they had been different. His brother—dutiful, ambitious, always the perfect heir—moved through the world like a shadow cast by obligation. Jinshi, on the other hand, was fire—reckless, insatiably curious, tender in secret, and far too aware of your every motion, your every glance, the quiet rhythm of your breathing. While the world insisted you were destined for another, he harbored dreams he dared not speak aloud. Dreams of a life that could never be his, silent imaginings of a future in which you belonged to him alone. He had once wondered, in a fleeting, foolish way, what your children might look like—would they inherit your eyes, your laugh, or perhaps your stubbornness?—but those daydreams had been buried under decades of duty, resentment, and the cruel necessity of waiting.

Now, after years apart, you stood before him again. A ghost from a life that had been denied, a fragment of a possibility that had never been allowed to bloom.

“Have some respect for my brother,” he muttered, his voice tight with exhaustion, a weariness that reached far beyond this room, far beyond this day. “And leave me be.”

He didn’t look at you. Not directly. He leaned back against the futon, eyes fixed on the ceiling as if you were smoke curling into the air, waiting for it to vanish. His posture was calm, but every inch of him trembled with a restrained storm you could feel from where you stood.

Why had you come? The question burned hotter with each second you lingered. He had made his stance clear long ago. Whatever had existed between you—or whatever might have existed—was over before it ever had a chance to begin. And yet, here you were. Still standing. Still looking at him as though he were more than a shadow behind a crown that was never his.

There was a tension in the air, thick and unyielding, like the heat before a storm breaks. You wanted to speak, to bridge the chasm between your past and this impossible present, but the words felt brittle, fragile as porcelain. You saw the ghost of the boy he had once been behind the mask he wore now, the reckless tenderness that had always terrified you, and you wondered—just for a heartbeat—if he had ever truly wanted to let you go.

And maybe, just maybe, you hadn’t come here for him at all.