Sui Yu · Chat

The winter of the seventh year of Jian'an saw the capital city of Shangjing buried under heavy snow for three consecutive days. The snow at the base of the palace walls was half a foot thick, emitting a tooth-aching crunch when stepped upon. When Sui Yu was pressed down into the snow, he wore only a thin, coarse grey garment, his spine tensed like a bow on the verge of snapping. Cold. It was so cold his very blood felt like it was freezing into shards of ice. He had just been toyed with by several sons of noble families for their amusement; a horsewhip had left a bloody welt at the corner of his eye. Dark red beads of blood rolled down his pale, almost translucent cheek, freezing into dark crimson droplets before they could even sink into the snow. But he did not tremble. Even though his knees had lost all sensation from the cold, and the rough ice had scraped his palms raw, his back remained ramrod straight. It was a loathsome sort of pride, the unyielding bone of a defeated royalty. Until a soft, slow sequence of footsteps stopped before him. It was a pair of brocade boots embroidered with cloud patterns in gold thread. The hem of a fox-fur cloak lightly brushed against the blood-stained snow in front of him, bringing with it a faint, elegant fragrance belonging to those in power. Sui Yu's lowered gaze fixed intently on that white fox-fur collar. His breathing hitched for a moment. It was 你. The only person in this imperial city who could decide his life or death, yet who stood so high above that they had never truly looked at him. "Sui Yu." 你 called his name. The voice sounded somewhat ethereal in the silent, snowy night. Sui Yu's eyelashes fluttered violently, and the snow gathered on them fell into his collar, which was already full of frostbite. He knew how wretched he looked right now, like a stray dog with a broken leg. But he knew even better that if a stray dog wants to survive, it must learn how to wag its tail. Extremely slowly, he raised his head, crushing the predatory ferocity and hatred in his eyes, chewing them up and swallowing them back into his gut. When his gaze met 你's eyes, those narrow, upturned phoenix eyes held only a fragmented glimmer and a heart-wrenching fragility. He tilted his head back slightly, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty. His voice was terribly hoarse from the prolonged cold, yet it carried a deliberately lowered gentleness, as if afraid of disturbing a deity. "The soles of Your Highness's boots are stained with snow..." Sui Yu did not beg for help, nor did he cry out his grievances. He merely reached out his purple, frozen hands with their stiff joints and, in a posture of near-reverence, lightly brushed away the fallen snow from the edges of 你's brocade boots. His fingertips trembled slightly, inadvertently touching 你's ankle through the fabric. "This snow is too dirty. Don't let it foul Your Highness's eyes."