Your Majesty is Poisonous – Chapter 153
by Little PandaExtra 2
Longyi × Shuanglan (Childhood)
A few days after the Mid-Autumn Festival, Longyi packed up and moved into her newly purchased private residence outside the palace.
Stepping down from the horse carriage, she stared for a while at the Yao Residence across the street, its main gates shut tight. The corners of her eyes drooped with disappointment, and the excitement and joy she had felt on the ride over faded considerably.
Counting carefully, she and Shuanglan hadn’t seen each other in over a dozen days. She had assumed Shuanglan would keep an eye on the street from time to time, and the moment her carriage arrived, would fling open the door and come rushing out to greet her. She had replayed this scene in her mind countless times, giggling to herself each time she thought of it. Yet there she stood, foolishly waiting beside the carriage for a long while, and Shuanglan still didn’t come out.
“Your Highness, the sun is fierce today. Standing in the street too long will give you heat sickness,” a palace maid said, reaching up with a round fan to shield Longyi’s head, urging her cautiously.
“Mm.” Longyi glanced once more at the Yao Residence’s main gate, then reluctantly stepped into her own residence. As she walked, she instructed the palace maid, “Have someone prepare some greeting gifts. We’ve just arrived—we’ll need to get acquainted with the new neighbors.” The alley where the Yao Residence sat wasn’t deep, and the estates were large. Left and right, there were only three households in total, and one of the other residences was unoccupied. In truth, their only neighbors were Lord Yao’s family.
In the sweltering eighth month, Longyi had grown dizzy from the long carriage ride and dozed off in a chair while the palace maids prepared the gifts. Just as her consciousness began to drift, a palace maid came in to report: “Your Highness, Madam Yao and the Second Young Lady have arrived.”
Longyi yawned, propped her cheek on one hand, and slowly opened her eyes toward the doorway. The entrance stood empty. In the blinding midday light, dust motes drifted up and down like golden sand. Footsteps drew nearer through the courtyard, and she could faintly hear mother and daughter whispering—Madam Yao seemed to be giving Shuanglan some instructions.
In a daze, it was as if she had returned to that afternoon when she first met Shuanglan—not high summer but dead winter. The sunlight wasn’t golden like today’s either; it carried the rich, oily yellow of a salted duck egg’s yolk. The nanny had told her that a minister’s daughter would be entering the palace today to be her reading companion. She sat in a chair, her little feet dangling far above the ground, swinging idly and bumping against the chair legs. Her small, childish face was written all over with resistance.
“Send her back. I don’t want any reading companion.” Eight-year-old Longyi shoved the mountain of books on the desk aside and pouted in despair. “Go tell Imperial Father and Mother Empress—I can’t memorize it, I just can’t. Finding someone to study with me won’t help.” It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried. From childhood, she had taken her fair share of palm-spankings over this reading business. She simply couldn’t do it!
The nanny scrambled to pick up the books from the floor, coaxing her gently: “Little ancestor1, you mustn’t talk nonsense. His Majesty personally chose that girl for you. They say she’s the daughter of a great scholar who achieved Triple First2. How could she be sent back? Just think of it as having an extra playmate, won’t you?”
In her little head, Longyi pictured the terrifying sight of Imperial Father losing his temper. She bit her lip and said nothing.
“Then this slave-girl will call her in?” The nanny slipped out while the moment was ripe, and returned shortly after, leading in a little girl who barely reached her waist. She announced, “Your Highness, this is Hanlin Scholar Yao’s Second Young Lady, Yao Shuanglan.”
Yao Shuanglan knelt somewhat stiffly and bowed to Her Highness the Princess. She silently repeated to herself the instructions her parents had given her before entering the palace. She had come by His Majesty’s decree—to inspire the Princess to take an interest in learning. She could not fail. The consequences of the Emperor’s wrath were more than the Yao family could bear.
Shuanglan was precocious. At only seven years old, she already understood the stakes involved.
Longyi saw that this girl was younger than her and felt immediately reassured—her greatest fear had been that Imperial Father would send some older, boring bookworm to keep her in line. Looking more carefully, the Yao family’s second daughter wasn’t just young; she had a very sweet, obedient face, and when she bowed, she was so precise and proper, like a little adult. Almost… adorable.
“Stand up and speak.” Longyi looked at the little girl half a head shorter than herself and suddenly thought that having a playmate might not be so bad. Mother Empress forbade her from visiting other palaces, and even more strictly forbade her from getting close to her other sisters. Once, at a flower-viewing party in the palace, she saw that the few-month-old daughter of Consort De was adorable and wanted to go play with her—but Mother Empress stopped her with a single glare.
Of course, this playmate absolutely must not force her to study. “How did Imperial Father instruct you? Did he send you into the palace to make me study?” Longyi lifted her little chin high, showing a streak of defiance.
Shuanglan glanced at the books heaped in disarray on the desk and shook her head timidly. “Your Highness’s lessons are supervised by your tutor. Shuanglan has entered the palace by the Emperor’s gracious favor, to attend at Your Highness’s side, grind ink and hold brushes, and broaden my horizons.” She could see that the Princess truly loathed studying. A princess with this temperament absolutely could not be pushed. She would have to think of another approach.
“You want to broaden your horizons?” Longyi grabbed the armrests and hopped down from the chair. She walked up to Shuanglan with a grin, looking down at her. “Can you climb trees?”
“…” Shuanglan shook her head blankly.
“It’s fine if you can’t.” Longyi eagerly took Shuanglan’s hand, then suddenly frowned. “Your hand is so cold!”
Shuanglan tried to pull her hand back, but found that Her Highness was gripping too tightly to slip free. She said, a little embarrassed, “My hands have been colder than other people’s since I was little. Please forgive me, Your Highness.”
“As long as you’re not freezing. The sun looks fierce today, but the wind is quite strong.” Longyi saw that Shuanglan was dressed thinly and said to the nanny, “Nanny, bring two extra garments. Shuanglan and I are going out.”
The nanny’s head swelled with worry. The Princess was probably about to cause trouble again! “Where is Your Highness going?”
“Haha, I’ll take Shuanglan to see the big serpent3 Imperial Father keeps!” Longyi clasped Shuanglan’s hand tightly, coaxing her like a little sister. “Don’t be scared—we’ll climb a tree and look over the wall. It won’t be able to bite us.”
“A serpent?” Shuanglan’s otherwise composed face went instantly pale. She was terrified to death of any creature with fewer than two legs or more than four—and within that range, the bigger they were, the more frightened she became.
Shuanglan didn’t remember when the nanny had draped the extra clothes over her, or whether they had walked or taken a palanquin to get there. By the time she came to her senses, she was already standing under a large tree. The Princess stood beside her, pointing at a high wall with exuberant energy. “On the other side of that wall is the Beast Enclosure. That serpent is huge—absolutely huge!”
Shuanglan’s liver quaked.
“The snake’s skin has big floral roundels all over it—really pretty. When the snake moves, it looks just like floral brocade rippling in the wind.” Longyi spoke with dancing eyebrows.
Shuanglan’s stomach juddered, and she felt a bit queasy.
Longyi gripped the trunk and scrambled up nimbly. The nanny and several palace maids and eunuchs clustered beneath the tree, arms outstretched, terrified their mischievous little ancestor might take a bad fall. Longyi settled on a thick branch and reached down toward Shuanglan. “Step on Eunuch Wang’s shoulders to climb up—he’s tall. I’ll pull you up from here.”
Shuanglan, however composed and precocious, was still a little girl at heart. She bit her lip and shrank back in terror—she couldn’t even look at a snake, let alone a super-sized one. But she retreated straight into Eunuch Wang’s chest. He misread the situation, assumed she wanted to go up, and hoisted her high onto his shoulders… At only seven, small and thin, she was dazedly lifted into the tree like a plaything by the tall, strapping Eunuch Wang.
“Ah—” Shuanglan stifled a scream. She clutched the trunk desperately, not daring to look at the ground far below.
Longyi, in a streak of mischief, twisted her body, making the branch they shared wobble.
Shuanglan lunged into Longyi’s arms in terror, begging with a sob in her voice, “Your Highness, please don’t move—we’ll fall!”
The sudden embrace sent a flicker of something unfamiliar through Longyi’s heart. The tiny figure clutched her waist, face buried in her chest, body trembling slightly. Here and now, in this small world atop a tree, she was the only thing this little girl could cling to.
The feeling was truly wonderful.
It wasn’t as if she had never held a little girl before. Mother Empress forbade her from getting close to her sisters in the palace, but during festival visits to her maternal grandfather’s house, she could see her younger female cousin. Cousin Sun Yan was about Shuanglan’s age and exceptionally clingy—every time they met, Sun Yan would excitedly throw herself into Longyi’s arms, and then Longyi’s chest would ache for days. And that was with the little cousin holding back her strength after a thousand warnings! A rough-and-tumble girl like Sun Yan even cuddled with brutish force—fearless and undaunted, never once looking fragile and helpless the way Shuanglan did now.
She was Yan’er’s elder cousin in name, but in her heart, she secretly feared her one and only little cousin. She would never bring Yan’er into the palace to see the serpent, either—Mother Empress’s prohibition aside, her greatest fear was that the wretched child would go barreling around the palace causing disasters with her reckless, tigerish energy.
Longyi couldn’t bear to tease Shuanglan anymore. She gently put her arm around the girl’s shoulders and said with the dependable air of a big sister, “Don’t be afraid. I won’t let you fall. Trust me.”
“Then can we go down and play something else?” Shuanglan clung to Longyi desperately, as if she would plunge to the ground the instant she let go.
“After you’ve seen the serpent, we’ll go down.” Longyi’s face had been beaming throughout with the joy of sharing a treasured delight. She pointed toward the Beast Enclosure across the way. “Look—the one coiled up in that cage is it.”
Shuanglan didn’t dare open her eyes. She stayed buried in Longyi’s chest, her body trembling even more violently.
Longyi looked down at the little figure in her arms and pouted unhappily. “Why won’t you look?”
Shuanglan didn’t dare anger Her Highness, and she also knew that if she didn’t at least glance at the snake, the Princess would never let her down. So she pursed her lips tightly and, trembling all over, looked in the direction of Her Highness’s pointing finger… A giant snake, gray-skinned with black patterns, lay coiled inside an iron cage. Its body slithered slowly, flicking its forked tongue from time to time.
“Isn’t it super huge?” A childish note of pride crept into Longyi’s voice.
“…” Shuanglan didn’t answer. She had been scared senseless.
“Someday I’ll raise a small one for myself, too.” Longyi was wistfully imagining this when a palace maid suddenly came rushing over. “Your Highness, Her Majesty wishes to see you.”
Longyi’s mouth drooped. She muttered under her breath, “What a buzzkill.”
Footnotes
- An affectionate, exasperated term for a demanding child, likening them to an ancestor being worshipped.
- Achieving first place in all three tiers of the imperial examinations—county, provincial, and palace—the highest academic honor in imperial China.
- Colloquial northern Chinese dialect term for a snake, used playfully here.
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