Chapter 61

The Ink Dry Lotus needed to be boiled before it could be used to dye hair, and it normally carried a faint bitter scent of herbs. Shen Xinian pulled over a lock of his still-damp hair and sniffed it. To his surprise, instead of bitterness, he caught a sweet pear fragrance—Xie Jingtang must have added something to it.

…A fragrance so enticing that it set Shen Xinian’s stomach rumbling.

Xie Jingtang heard it clearly.

She looked puzzled. “Is that normal for you?”

This child had never been such a big eater before.

Far from it—in the past, Shen Xinian had been the sort of picky youth who chewed his food with deliberate slowness, only to lose his appetite midway through the meal.

Shen Xinian rubbed his belly. “It’s nothing. I think I’m just making up for lost time. When I was the Little Bird, I didn’t get much nutrition. Now that I’m human again, my body’s a bit depleted. I need to eat more to build it back up.”

Xie Jingtang parted his hair, letting the sunlight fall evenly across it.

“Alright, then. I’ll go change my clothes. Wait until your hair is completely dry before tying it up. And don’t move around—you’ll get your clothes dirty.”

She had noticed the fine quality of his garments earlier and, before dyeing his hair, had specially draped a piece of hide over his shoulders and back to protect them.

“Got it!” Shen Xinian stayed perfectly still, waving a hand. “Mother, dress up pretty! See you in a bit~”

Xie Jingtang smiled.

The faint reluctance she’d felt moments ago—the fear that leaving might shatter this dream—dissolved into thin air.

She straightened her sleeves and stepped out of the courtyard.

Shen Xinian remained seated on his little stool, sunning his hair.

As he did, his thoughts wandered.

He was still adjusting, too.

This time, transforming back into human form felt like a thick veil of white gauze had been lifted from his mind. Not only had all his memories returned, but every scene was now vividly sharp.

Freed from the limitations of a bird’s brain, he could recall everything with crystal clarity: the words in his books, the contents of policy essays… it all made perfect sense now.

Of course, the same sharp recall applied to plenty of his mortifying moments as the Little Bird.

That explained why Benefactor had initially suspected the Little Bird Dumpling’s past life involved a young child, directing Sui Ziming to investigate in that direction. Reflecting on his behavior now, Shen Xinian realized that right after his rebirth in bird form, his intelligence had been about that of a six-year-old at most—definitely no more than seven.

Low intellect aside, his stubborn streak had been as strong as ever.

He’d bottled up that unyielding determination not to bow down, hell-bent on earning Benefactor’s respect. He’d even managed to sprint wildly through the mansion for a full two hours using nothing but his tiny bird claws.

Shen Xinian took a deep breath, nearly choking himself in the process.

Two hours! For a bird no bigger than a fist, he had no idea where he’d gotten the stamina.

Later, as he spent more time around Pei Du—perhaps absorbing a bit of the man’s destiny as a pillar of this world, combined with Pei Du’s persistent attempts to tutor the Little Bird—Shen Jiujiu’s wits had improved, slowly but surely.

The most telling change? The Little Bird had evolved from mindless clinging and nuzzling to a creature stirring with the first flutters of springtime longing.

And…

Shen Xinian realized something, and suspicion began to brew.

Did Pei Du truly not remember what had happened in those dreams?

Shen Jiujiu had always projected an image of modest cleverness mixed with everyday obliviousness in Pei Du’s presence, so the man’s disguises around the Little Bird weren’t always airtight.

The first dream had been innocuous enough. As a child, he’d appeared in Benefactor’s dream during a memorial for the Duke’s Consort. He hadn’t done much—just kept company and folded some illusory gold ingots.

But the next day, Shen Xinian distinctly remembered Pei Du’s gaze softening when he looked at the Little Bird, his indulgence even greater than usual.

That instance was minor, though. The real problem was the second time.

Shen Xinian buried his face in his hands, his toes curling repeatedly inside his shoes.

What on earth had he done?

Convinced that Benefactor wouldn’t remember the dream, he’d gone straight for a heartfelt confession to his beloved—right there in the dream.

No, wait—bluntly claiming to be the other’s betrothed, a child bridegroom no less, was somehow worse than a straight confession.

His flawless memory had its downsides.

Shen Xinian recalled Pei Du’s expression from that moment with painful clarity.

…Better not dwell on it.

Look forward instead.

Cut himself some slack.

Everyone had their cringeworthy moments. Shake it off and move on.

Seated on his stool, Shen Xinian silently embraced the version of himself that kept dying of embarrassment in his memories.

Woo.

No, he needed a moment to recover.

At least a breather before he could resume pursuing his beloved.

Otherwise, his mind was flooded with that line: “I’m your betrothed—the one you have an arranged marriage with.” Too shocking.

He simply couldn’t empathize with his past self.

He just wanted to time-travel back and clamp a hand over his own mouth.

Shen Xinian rested his chin on his knees, cradling the wide sleeves of his robes—which he’d gathered into his lap to keep them clean, given how low the stool sat.

From afar, he looked like a mushroom sprouting in the sunlight.

Footsteps approached, and a pair of boots came to a stop right in front of him.

Shen Xinian looked up from the boots, but before his eyes reached Pei Du’s handsome face, they landed on a plate of steaming pastries.

Pei Du asked, “Hair not dry yet?”

Shen Xinian shook his head slightly and reached for the plate. “Not yet. Mother applied a second layer to make it waterproof. It’ll probably need a bit more sun.”

Shen Xinian’s sunning spot was right beside the courtyard’s artificial rockery with its lotus pond. Pei Du set the plate down by the pool’s edge and, gathering his robes, sat beside it.

Surprise bloomed openly across Shen Xinian’s face. Anyone else—like Sui Ziming—doing the same wouldn’t have elicited such a reaction.

Pei Du nudged the plate closer. “Eat.”

Shen Xinian was starving, especially with the pastries’ aroma wafting straight to his nose—sweet and savory, probably filled with meat.

Yet he hesitated.

His indecision was plain as day on his face. Pei Du plucked a lotus leaf, snapped it free, and offered it over.

The autumn lotus leaves had lost their vibrant green, their edges tinged yellow, but they were well-maintained—no rot or blemishes marred the ones still floating in the pond.

Shen Xinian’s lips curved in a smile. He pinched up a pastry and used the leaf to catch the crumbs as he ate.

At first, he tried to keep his manners refined, but these were fresh-from-the-oven meat-filled delights, bursting with flavor at the first bite. The more he ate, the happier he got—and the hungrier. Soon, he was devouring them with gusto.

Even Shen Xinian hadn’t noticed that Pei Du had risen at some point and gone inside to pour a cup of water.

Pei Du waited for a good while. Seeing the young man devour an entire plate of snacks without choking himself, he couldn’t help but chuckle. He handed the teacup to the boy.

“Thank you, thank you.”

With his stomach now full, warm water sliding down his throat, Shen Xinian felt utterly content, lounging back lazily.

Pei Du laughed softly. “When you first arrived, Zhong Bo said that as long as it could eat, it could live. This little bird was sure to thrive.”

Shen Jiujiu recalled the little bird that had once tried to starve itself to death in its cage, feeling a touch embarrassed. He quietly wiped his hands clean with a handkerchief and sneaked a glance at Pei Du. “So, back then, why did you decide to keep me?”

Pei Du thought about it seriously for a moment.

“It was a rare stroke of fate, so I made a bet with myself.” The man’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “If this little bird could find its way to me, I’d raise it.”

That explained why the window in Pei Du’s study had been open at the time.

What Pei Du hadn’t anticipated was that this clever bird, capable of opening its own cage, would turn out to be a little ground-walking chirper. It had trekked all the way from the rear garden, crossing mountains and rivers in its own way, before plopping down on the study threshold and securing a permanent spot in Pei Mansion.

The two of them recalled that moonlit scene at the same moment and burst into laughter together.

Pei Du was far too perceptive not to notice that Shen Xinian had changed.

Or rather, this was the real, complete Shen Xinian.

The autumn sunlight caressed their hair, spilling across their shoulders and the hems of their robes.

In his sleeve, Pei Du’s hand clutched a delicate necklace with the pink jade pendant. The thin golden chain wound around his fingers, leaving a faint cool sensation.

Shen Xinian reached up to touch his hair, shifting his position to face Pei Du directly.

He had considered whether to tell Pei Du about the matters from his dream, but Shen Xinian felt he understood his benefactor well enough by now. Though it was the little bird that had died of embarrassment, Pei Du had clearly been the one most shocked in that whole affair.

So, with thoughtful consideration, Shen Xinian swallowed the words he had been about to say.

He would sort out the details of the original story over the next couple of days, make a neat table, and hand it straight to his benefactor.

Pei Du’s right hand remained hidden in the wide sleeve. After a brief pause, he spoke in a low voice. “I’ve been thinking about holding an apprenticeship banquet. With Madam Xie here in the mansion right now, Xinian… would you be willing to become my student?”

Even though Shen Xinian didn’t buy into the idea that heaven, earth, sovereign, and teacher were inviolable and beyond transgression, he had no intention of rejecting Pei Du’s beliefs on those grounds.

It wasn’t that the restraint of ancient times meant backwardness, or that the openness of the future equated to righteousness. Far too many things couldn’t be judged with a simple “should be this way.”

Shen Xinian pondered seriously for a while.

He had so much he wanted to say—far too long had passed since he’d last expressed his thoughts so freely that his mind felt a bit jumbled.

But if he stripped away all the tangled considerations and focused solely on what he truly wanted, it became simple.

“However, I don’t want to be your junior, sheltered under your wings and protected for life.”

Shen Xinian was no longer the brash, straightforward Shen Jiujiu of before. He could sense Pei Du’s complicated aversion to his courtesy name, so he avoided using it as a form of address.

At the same time, the relationship between him and Pei Du remained tantalizingly ambiguous.

The term “benefactor” had, by now, taken on layers of meaning far beyond its literal sense for both of them.

So Shen Xinian simply set aside the troublesome title. With his human form, he openly acknowledged all the fervor from before.

“I have to admit that the old me was indeed immature in some ways and often handled things improperly. But precisely because of that, every word I spoke and every action I took came straight from my heart.”

“I’m serious.”

As he said this, Shen Xinian met Pei Du’s gaze without the slightest evasion.

“I admire your knowledge, yearn for your wisdom, and respect your character. So I would be more than happy to become your student, eager to learn more from you about conduct and scholarship, to become more outstanding, more dependable, more mature.”

“But if it has to be one or the other, I want to fight for the chance to be seen by you.”

The young man’s expression was open and sincere, his eyes clear and bright.

“I like you.”

“From that first glance when you saved me from the water.”

“I’ve liked you for a very, very long time.”

“Look, I finally made it to you.”

Shen Xinian spread his hands, flashing a mischievous, playful smile that brought out the dimples in his cheeks.

“How could I bear to give that up now?”