TCPM 13

 

Chapter 13

Wei Zai had recently become obsessed with playing Mahjong, clinging to her iPad all day long without letting go. Xu Jianyou had peeked at her matches a time or two, only to find her playing like absolute trash—within just a few days, she had dragged Xu Jianyou's account down by two full ranks. Xu Jianyou was deeply traumatized; so much for being a seasoned gambling veteran—she turned out to be an authentic wealth-scattering boy.

Lately, Xu Jianyou had been having intermittent dreams about Wei Zai and Xu Qingchu. She had cautiously probed Wei Zai about them, and what Wei Zai described generally matched her dreams, except that the dreams were mostly from Xu Qingchu's perspective. They felt so hyper-realistic that she felt like a fanatical shipper watching from the sidelines, wanting to grab them by the collars and yell at them to stop playing hard to get: Just get together already, you two!

For several days straight, Xu Jianyou's gaze toward Wei Zai carried a warmth that was perhaps a bit too intense, making Wei Zai quite uncomfortable. Hurriedly wrapping up a match that had ended with her in fourth place, Wei Zai put down the iPad and asked Xu Jianyou with a serious expression, "You've been looking at me with weird eyes lately. Is something wrong with me?"

Xu Jianyou held up two fingers in front of her: "Two questions. First, didn't you say you were never-defeated at gambling? How on earth did you manage to lose this badly?" She pointed at a consecutive string of third- and fourth-place finish records in the game, a complaint she had been holding back for a long time.

"Ahem," Wei Zai gave an embarrassed cough, her eyes drifting elsewhere. "When did I ever say such a thing? What I said was that I deeply loved gambling in my youth and knew how to play every single variety."

"You knew how to play them, but you had zero skill and relied entirely on luck, right?" Xu Jianyou sighed, scrolling back up through the match records to try and polish up her technique. "The opponent already declared riichi, so dropping a live tile is super dangerous. Oh, a live tile just means a tile that hasn't appeared on the table yet... The player to your left is obviously building a pin suit, so at this point, you have to hold onto your pin tiles..."

Wei Zai listened until her head started throbbing. Although she liked to play, she had zero love for calculations; just as she had told Xu Jianyou, she played purely for luck, and besides, she hadn't lacked money when she was young. Xu Jianyou's look of mingled exasperation and disciplined restraint was an exact replica of how Xu Qingchu had looked when she first discovered this fact. Back then, the very first thing Xu Qingchu did wasn't to lecture her on strategy, but rather to sort out the estate's ledger books and present them to her in a clean, straightforward manner so she could see precisely how much silver she had squandered away.

Wei Zai was left entirely speechless. Her penchant for heavy gambling stemmed from two things: first, youthful playfulness; and second, a deliberate attempt to project an incompetent, wastrel image to the outside world, meaning she wasn't truly all that addicted to it. So she had asked Xu Qingchu what she ought to do about it.

Xu Qingchu had told her that the path of gambling wasn't necessarily a bad one, provided she learned to control her wins and losses and balance her ledger. And so Wei Zai was dragged through the wringer of learning how to keep score, how to read the expressions of the people around her, how to judge the size of dice rolls by sound, which betting methods involved actual skill, and which ones were completely uncontrollable. Wei Zai studied it until her head felt fit to split in two—she never could have imagined there was so much profound scholarship hidden in it. How on earth did Xu Qingchu understand so much? Shouldn't a proper imperial scholar spend all her time on academic classics?

Xu Qingchu had only smiled without answering. Back then, how could she possibly tell Wei Zai that she had spent a year or two studying Wei Zai herself, deliberately making advance preparations just to better get close to her and gain her trust? It was just that she hadn't anticipated at the time that her efforts would end up being utilized for such a purpose.

Wei Zai had studied very earnestly for a few days before promptly announcing her surrender. This was even harder than studying for exams! Refusing point-blank to continue, she preferred to find some other hopeless, incompetent path instead. Xu Qingchu said absolutely not, telling her not to waste the silver she had already thrown away.

In the end, Wei Zai decided that henceforth, no matter what kind of gambling den she entered, she would always bring a disguised Xu Qingchu along with her. For quite a long period afterward, wild rumors flew across the capital that Princess Kangning had acquired a retainer who was preternaturally skilled at gambling, which only made her already outrageous reputation become even more absurdly exaggerated.

Wei Zai had been immensely proud of herself—she had sat by a tree stump waiting for a hare and a heaven-sent Xu Qingchu had dropped right into her lap. With such a brilliant mind at her disposal, she could always get her accounts calculated with absolute clarity, to the point that she eventually managed to lose even herself completely to Xu Qingchu. Heaven only knew who the real hare caught in the trap was.

"Are you even listening to me? Did you understand any of that?" Xu Jianyou's voice pulled Wei Zai back from her reverie.

Looking up at the ceiling and down at the floor, Wei Zai decided it was best to fast-track past this topic: "Understood, understood! Didn't you say you had two questions? What's the other one?"

"Ahem..." Now it was Xu Jianyou's turn to feel awkward. Hesitatingly, she said, "This might be a bit intrusive... but I'm genuinely super curious... if you don't want to answer, you can totally reject me..."

Gaining her curiosity, Wei Zai generously replied, "Go ahead and speak, let me hear it."

Xu Jianyou covertly peeked at her expression: "It's just... that post we looked at together last time... do you remember? The one about... the one about Wei-Xu or Xu-Wei..."

"Ahhh, what on earth am I asking, just pretend I never said anything!" Xu Jianyou covered her face, feeling entirely hijacked by her shipper brain, blushing furiously from her cheeks all the way to the tips of her ears. It had to be fanfiction's fault, absolutely!

Wei Zai was slightly dazed for a moment, but after processing it for a second, she burst into laughter—laughing so hard the roof tiles almost seemed ready to lift off.

Xu Jianyou was so mortified her head felt like it was steaming, holding her face in her hands with infinite regret.

Once Wei Zai finished laughing, she remarked, "Well, there's nothing really unspeakable about that; it was pretty much a mutual back-and-forth anyway. I'm just surprised you care about such things."

"You're not angry?"

"Why on earth would I be angry? If something can be done and experienced out in the open, there's nothing that can't be talked about."

"Then... the last question." Xu Jianyou put aside her playful demeanor, turning notably solemn.

Wei Zai didn't mind that this was technically a third question; she quietly looked at her, signaling her to go ahead and ask.

Xu Jianyou asked in a soft voice, "What do you call her?"

"A-You. I call her A-You." Wei Zai's reply was equally soft and gentle, yet her gaze remained fixed squarely on Xu Jianyou, and an inexpressible, lingering tenderness streamed through those eyes, striking straight into the depths of Xu Jianyou's heart.

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