Her Moon, My Mountain - Chapter 2

The good news: I had escaped disaster.

The bad news: I celebrated too soon.

The freshly wounded prince sent someone to summon me to her room and apply medicine to her injury.

The instant I crossed the threshold, I dropped to my knees.

Weeping bitterly, I cried, “Your Highness, forgive me! This servant deserves death! I never, ever should have deceived you. But I swear to Heaven that I have never revealed your secret to another soul! Nor have I ever discussed with Nanny what color your undergarments might be…”

Everyone knew that I was the Prince of Lin’s most trusted guard.

I had only one flaw: my mouth was a sieve.

A badly broken one.

In the warm candlelight, Su Ji sat on the edge of the bed in a single robe of luminous white silk. I irritated her so badly that she laughed.

“Come here!”

Without her outer robes, she looked slender and soft. A silk ribbon loosely bound her raven hair, which fell over one shoulder. Her beauty was impossible to conceal, yet she sat with careless swagger, one foot braced on a wooden stool, possessing an androgynous allure all her own.

Her night robe was unusually thin. Beneath it, graceful curves traced themselves through the cloth, and a suggestive touch of scarlet showed faintly through…

Mm. A red dudou…

Pah, pah, pah! What was I thinking?

I hastily lowered my head.

Cringing, I grudgingly shuffled forward half an inch.

Her eyes narrowed. “Must this prince invite you?”

My heart went cold.

As expected, I had been called here to receive my sentence.

I delayed no longer. I hurried forward on my knees and knelt straight before her.

She rested an elbow on her knee, leaned forward, and forced my chin up.

Without sound or movement, her pressure came down on me like mountains and seas.

“How long have you known?”

“Th-three…”

“Three days? Three months?”

I closed my eyes and thought, *Master, you are far too optimistic.*

“Three years.”

“…”

For a moment, the room was so quiet that a falling needle would have thundered.

After what seemed a lifetime, I finally heard her voice.

“Yue. Ru. Zhen!” Su Ji ground out each syllable through clenched teeth, almost laughing from fury. “You are far more capable than I gave you credit for!”

I wanted to bury my head in the floor. I dared not make a sound.

“Ha. Unable to see, are you? You dared lie to me?”

Her fingertip seemed rimed with frost as it pressed against the corner of my eye.

“All those times this prince had you attend my bath—you saw everything, didn’t you?”

Every sentence struck like a sledgehammer.

My ears rang. Darkness swallowed my vision.

Only one word, written in strokes black as ink, circled through my skull.

*Doomed!*

It was true. From the beginning, Su Ji had kept me close because—

I was blind.

More precisely, I had once been blind.

Three years earlier, starving badly enough to dig snow from the street and eat it, I had stopped the carriage of the Prince of Lin.

I had solemnly declared that although I could not see, I possessed an extraordinary gift: I could identify my surroundings through echoes and move without hindrance.

If she would only give me something to eat, I would even acknowledge her as my adoptive father!

At first, she had dismissed my bold recommendation of myself.

When she heard that last offer, however, her face twitched, and she turned to leave.

In desperation, I clutched the flatbread she had tossed me in my left hand and grabbed for her with my right.

I pulled hard.

*Rrrip—*

I tore open both her robe and the trousers beneath it.

To this day, I still did not know how magnificent her expression had been.

Hunger had addled my mind.

My hand had the stubbornness of death itself.

And my strength was inexhaustible.

To keep from standing half naked in the street, a mighty imperial prince had been forced to grind her teeth and accept my application.

She took me back to the estate.

I believed she had admired my strength and seen that I was promising material, someone who could make her feel perfectly safe.

That was why she brought me wherever she went, waking or sleeping.

At banquets, I poured her wine. In danger, I took blades for her.

For one salary, I performed two jobs, serving as both guard and maid.

Of course, outsiders thought I did three—including warming her bed at night.

Even a mill donkey was not exploited so mercilessly.

Only later did I realize how wrong I had been.

Spectacularly wrong.

Something about me had indeed caught her eye, but not my strength.

It was my blindness.

My first duty after entering the estate was to attend the prince’s bath.

I thought nothing of it at the time.

I did not know Su Ji was testing me.

As I stared straight ahead, adding hot water and waiting on her, she removed her fox-fur cloak before me, shed every layer beneath it, and sank into the tub.

Black hair spread through the water. Steam painted a faint blush across her pale face, while the eyes behind the mist studied me without blinking.

Had I possessed working eyes, I would have discovered what a tempting sight lay beneath all those heavy clothes.

Unfortunately I did not—or rather, fortunately, I could then make out only the vaguest shadows.

That smooth skin, those twin mounds of snowy jade… to me, they were nothing but a wavering patch of white.

I passed her test.

That should have been the end of everything.

But I took the principle of earning a lord’s pay and serving that lord far too seriously.

When she finished bathing, I snatched up a cloth to dry her.

Su Ji instinctively raised a hand to block me.

My little finger still brushed something unusual.

Soft. Smooth. Springy.

Uh.

My mind froze.

So did Su Ji, halfway out of the bath.

She asked what I was thinking.

Her voice was terrifying.

I knew that one wrong word would cost me far more than my place in the estate. My life itself was in peril.

My voice shook. “Th-this servant does not dare say…”

She stared at me and spoke one word. “Say it.” It rang like the brief metallic note of a guillotine before the blade fell.

She frightened tears out of me.

Half performance and half genuine terror, they transformed me into a trembling beauty pearled with rain.

“This servant… This servant was just thinking that Your Highness seems to have neglected your training…”

—You have three seconds to explain the difference between that thing and a lump of fat.

Su Ji could not.

Just as I hoped, she choked on silence.

Before she could react, I hurried to save myself. “No, no! That is not what this servant meant. Naturally, Your Highness is tremendously strong! Tall and mighty! Broad and fat—”

“Shut up!” Su Ji snapped.

…

Heh! I had bluffed my way through.

You think that was the end?

No.

The next day, I was sent to the rear mountain to retrieve a Buddha statue.

Two old women escorted me.

The grotto was deep and cold. Both walls were covered in bright colors, glaze, and paint.

At the time, I merely lamented the extravagance of the Prince of Lin’s Estate.

—All that money!

Only later did I learn that the walls on either side had been packed with silent venomous snakes.

Those two women, each strong enough to uproot mountains, had not come to help me.

They were watching me.

If I showed the slightest sign that anything was amiss, they would probably have shoved my head into the snakes’ bellies on the spot.

Not someone to provoke.

From then on, I carved one truth deep into my heart: Su Ji was not someone to provoke.