Su Yu was a man who had seen enough of the world to keep his face even when the ground shifted beneath him. The situation had become what it had become — he accepted it, recovered his smile within moments, and fell to drinking and talking with Wang Jinlun and the others as though the whole affair had already left his mind.
He had brought along several cousins from the second and third branches of the family, but their positions were delicate — slipping away in full view of the gathering to go warn Su Mu was not something any of them could do gracefully. It was Su Yu’s personal guard who found an opening, slipped out, and rode hard back toward Su Manor.
Su Mu had no idea he had become the undisputed main character of the Peach Garden Poetry Gathering. At this particular moment, he had assembled the manor’s household servants and errand boys in the main courtyard for a game of cuju. Lu Qinghua, accompanied by Cai’er, had toured the grand residence with considerable appreciation, and now the two of them sat in the garden pavilion drinking tea and eating fruit, watching the men chase the leather ball through the afternoon heat.
“Young Master never used to do things like this…” Girls, as a general rule, establish friendships quickly. Cai’er, though nominally Su Mu’s personal maidservant and therefore of slightly higher standing within the household, had never been shy about hard work, and she and Lu Qinghua had found a natural common ground.
Lu Qinghua had been about to say something cutting, then realized Su Mu wasn’t there to receive it, and so changed course with studied nonchalance. “What sort of person was your young master before?”
“Before? He used to…” Cai’er didn’t particularly like speaking ill of people — but gossip is a woman’s instinct, and Su Mu was not present, and she felt warmly toward this older-sister figure sitting beside her. She began to talk in a low, confidential murmur. When she reached the part about the Su Mu who had come back from his travels, however, her voice shifted, and something in her eyes went soft.
***
Su Mu had looked out at the fine weather and felt an impulse. He wanted to see what football looked like in Da Yan. He sent Xu Sanjin to arrange it.
Xu Sanjin had been half-bracing himself for punishment since the business at the bun shop — he’d made a fool of himself, and young masters had long memories. What he had not expected was for Su Mu to hold no grudge whatsoever and hand him a rolled crepe instead. It had, he reflected, fairly well disarmed him. He was a boy from the streets, but he considered himself a man of his word — which was, after all, why he had actually shown up at the Lu family bun shop. A young master who didn’t hold a grudge was a young master worth serving.
He raised the Su Manor’s banner and went to the Qiyun Society to invite several of their best players over for a proper match.
The Qiyun Society was Hangzhou’s most reputable cuju club, its roster full of accomplished players. They had assumed the young master simply wanted to watch. They were not prepared for him to roll up his sleeves and take the field himself — and even less prepared for his footwork to be genuinely good. Even the Qiyun players exchanged glances.
Cuju had flourished since the height of the Tang, and by the Da Yan dynasty it had spread everywhere. Scholars generally considered themselves above such undignified exertion, but Su Mu did not particularly think of himself as a scholar, so that was not his problem.
In this particular thread of history, the divergence from his own world seemed to have begun somewhere around the Sui and Tang. Li Bai had never become the wine-soaked poet-immortal of legend — instead, it appeared, he had ended up as the top name on the western frontier’s roster of martial outlaws. Many figures and events had taken quite different shapes. Even the cuju ball was different: not the solid sphere of compressed hair from the history books, but an inflated leather ball, sewn and pumped.
Su Mu had not been much of a football fan in his previous life, but he had burned for it briefly in his school years. Playing against a team of ancient Chinese sportsmen scratched a very particular itch. He was enjoying himself immensely.
The game used a single goal — two tall poles with an enormous frame between them, though the actual target was a much smaller aperture near the top called the “wind-flow eye.” The players devoted as much attention to style as to scoring, performing elaborate tricks and flourishes, all elegant movement and controlled precision. It was less like competitive football and more like freestyle.
When they were tired, Su Mu ordered the household staff to bring cool tea and sweet cakes, and made sure everyone was properly looked after. Among the players he noticed one in particular: tall, slender, broad-shouldered, with quick eyes and an unexpectedly refined bearing. Su Mu fell into conversation with him — and then the young man introduced himself, and Su Mu went still.
“I’m sorry — what did you say your name was?”
“Gao Qiu.”
“Ha. So you’re Gao Qiu.”
“Has Young Master heard of me?”
“…Yes. I have. You — you’re good. Keep at it. I have high hopes for you.”
“Young Master flatters me. I’m grateful for the kind words.”
Su Mu vaguely recalled that in his own world, this same Gao Qiu had started out as a page boy in Su Shi’s household — Su Dongpo himself. Not uneducated by any means; there had been some literary ability there. The idea that he could have risen to Grand Marshal on football skills alone was always a bit much. But in this world there was no Su Shi. Gao Qiu’s path had apparently taken a different shape.
They exchanged a few more words, and Gao Qiu led the players back onto the field. Su Mu stayed in the pavilion, told Cai’er to go to the accounts room and draw some tip money, and added a specific instruction: Gao Qiu’s portion should be notably more generous than the rest.
With Cai’er gone, the pavilion held only Lu Qinghua and Su Mu. Lu Qinghua thought about what Cai’er had just told her, and shifted quietly a few inches further down the bench.
Su Mu noticed the wariness in her eyes — the careful distance she had put between them — and couldn’t account for it. He assumed, vaguely, that his post-football odor was to blame. He was thinking about going to change his clothes when quick footsteps crossed the courtyard toward him.
Su Manor was a merchant household, but it observed its proprieties. The servants here had been educated in the family’s private school since childhood — they knew how to comport themselves. One of them rushing across the courtyard without ceremony meant something had happened.
The man made his bow, glanced at Lu Qinghua, and leaned in to deliver his report in a low voice. Su Mu’s brow drew together slightly. He waved his hand; the servant went off at speed.
“If you — if you have something to attend to, I can…” Lu Qinghua had been looking for an excuse to leave since the servant appeared. She hadn’t quite dared, out of politeness. But Su Mu’s expression had gone unreadable, and she was not particularly keen to be nearby if a notorious young rake decided to take his mood out on those around him.
“Hmm? Nothing urgent. Sit — wait for Cai’er to come back and she’ll see you out.” He had registered her anxiety, it seemed, because he smiled at her, mild and unhurried, and then leaned against the pavilion railing, eyes half-closed, apparently thinking.
The pavilion went quiet. Lu Qinghua found it increasingly awkward — but leaving now felt wrong too. She stole a few glances at him. This person, she thought, was not quite the dissolute wastrel that Cai’er’s earlier account had described.
The awkward quiet didn’t last long. After a short while, one of the gatekeepers came over.
“Young Master — a Miss Li Manmiao from Sifan Tower is at the gate. She says she’s here to see you.”
“Sifan Tower? Li Manmiao?” Lu Qinghua might be a woman of the marketplace, but this was an era in which talented beauties were spoken of everywhere, and certain celebrated performers had names that carried well beyond the walls of their establishments. The great festivals — Mid-Autumn, Lantern Night — were occasions for public performances, and ordinary people knew the famous ones.
Lu Qinghua was still running through what she knew about Li Manmiao when Su Mu opened his eyes.
“Tell her to wait,” he said to the gatekeeper, with complete placidity. “And bring me paper and a brush.”
The gatekeeper hesitated. He seemed to know something of the history between Su Mu and Li Manmiao — she had apparently called at the manor before, and the young master had at one point been rather a frequent visitor to her chambers. Leaving a woman like that standing in the full glare of the sun felt, at minimum, unchivalrous.
“Go.”
“…Yes, Young Master.”
The gatekeeper withdrew. Lu Qinghua had by now remembered everything Cai’er had mentioned, and her expression moved through several shades of sentiment — scandalized, then reproachful.
“You know, even for you — she’s a young woman, and you’re going to make her stand in the sun—”
Su Mu turned to look at her.
“She’ll be fine,” he said, with serene unconcern. “The women of those establishments sleep by day and work by night. They don’t see enough sunlight as it is. A bit of sun is good for them — builds strong bones.”
The first half of this made Lu Qinghua’s face go crimson. The second half — builds strong bones — she had no idea what to do with. She filed it, as she had been filing various things he said, under Su Mu is apparently still somewhat unwell.
They bickered mildly for a few minutes. The gatekeeper returned with ink, brush, inkstone, and paper, setting everything out on the stone table. Su Mu rolled his wrist, settled his breathing, brought the brush down, and wrote without pausing — cleanly, quickly, done.
He blew on the ink, handed the paper to the gatekeeper, and waved him off.
“Tell her I’m unwell and can’t receive visitors. Send her on her way.”
“Yes—”
“Oh. Go and play football for half an hour first. Then go tell her.”
The gatekeeper stared at him.
Then he went to play football…
***
With the gatekeeper departed, Su Mu caught the look on Lu Qinghua’s face and his mischief surfaced. He grinned.
“Baozi girl — how about I teach you to write?”
Lu Qinghua heard the name and drew breath to be furious — and then she caught his gaze, which had drifted, for just a fraction of a moment, from her face to a point approximately three inches lower. She understood instantly what he meant by it. Her face went from warm to incandescent. She rose, shook out her sleeve with tremendous dignity, and left.
“Shameless!” she announced, to the world in general, on her way out.
Su Mu watched her retreating back with some satisfaction.
“Hmm,” he said to himself, chin in hand. “Not quite right. Not baozi girl. More like… cabbage roll girl.”
[G: 包子 means steamed bun, which can also be gentle slang for a well-rounded figure. 包菜 means cabbage — a softer, leafier shape. Su Mu is very quietly saying she’s not quite as generously proportioned as he first implied.]
***
Lu Qinghua came out of Su Manor at a clip and found exactly what she’d expected: a carriage waiting in the street, its curtain thrown back against the heat. She swept one glance over it and saw, for the first time, the celebrated Li Manmiao.
The woman was, as advertised, extraordinarily pretty.
Lu Qinghua thought about how this extraordinarily pretty woman had been made to sit in the sun while she herself had been given tea and fruit in the pavilion — and felt, despite herself, something that could only be described as smug.
Then she remembered Su Mu calling her baozi girl and what he had actually meant by it, and the smugness collapsed under a wave of mortification. She walked faster.
Baozi, he says, she thought, face burning. Cabbage roll is more like it.
She clapped her hands over her cheeks and bolted across the street.
Li Manmiao, still waiting in the carriage, watched a tall young woman go sprinting past with her face hidden in her hands, and understood, with the practiced insight of her profession, precisely why she herself had been left sitting outside.
“That wretched man,” she murmured, to no one in particular. “Another perfectly respectable girl corrupted.”
While she waited, patience wearing thin — the Peach Garden Poetry Gathering, some distance away, was by now in full festive swing.