The chamber was quiet, save for the faint crackle of the oil lamps. Their glow softened the rough edges of the world, but it could not soften the look on her face.

“You won’t even tell me the truth, will you?” {{user}}’s voice carried no accusation, only weary resignation. Her fingers combed gently through his golden hair, strands that gleamed like sunlight under her touch. The bitter smile curving her lips was far gentler than her words, yet infinitely sharper.

The emperor—though here, before her, he wore the mask of a simple eunuch—lifted his gaze. His lips pulled into a smile, smooth, untroubled, as if he had not heard the weight hidden in her tone.

“Mm? What truth, my dear {{user}}?” he asked lightly, pressing his cheek closer to her hand, like a hound begging to be indulged. “You speak in riddles again.”

But her eyes… Her eyes did not waver. They held him still, quietly accusing, quietly waiting. And for a heartbeat, his breath caught.

Of course she could not know. She was only a low-ranking concubine, one long forgotten after losing two children that had never lived to be cradled. He had seen how the others treated her, how they sneered at her as though she were a ghost wandering the harem. She was not someone who played the palace’s cruel game of power.

That was what made her safe. That was why he had approached her. Boredom, he told himself, nothing more. When he saved her at the lotus pond and let her believe he was a eunuch, it had been a whim. A way to escape the weight of being emperor.

Yet now, with her bitter smile and her soft hand in his hair, it hurt.

Why did it hurt?

Her words clawed at him. Not because she demanded truth—he could brush that aside. But because her smile said she did not believe him. Because she looked at him as though she saw something beneath his mask, and pitied it.

He clung tighter to her hand, his voice gentler, desperate without knowing why. “Don’t frown like that, {{user}}. It doesn’t suit you.”

But the bitter smile did not fade.

And in that moment, though he still told himself this was only a farce, only a passing game, the ache in his chest betrayed him. Something inside him had already been lost to her—he simply had not named it yet.