#I blame wk not being in more guzhuang for me killing Jingyan

[hardwareabstractionlayer]

As he lay down at the site of his every nightmare, he decided what he missed the most was waking to Jingyan’s steady breaths and arms.

After the coronation, the new Emperor readily granted Minister Su’s request to spend the rest of his numbered days at the northern border. He swallowed the herb meant for fifteen years ago, said farewell to the few still left, swung the reins toward the dirt road by the pavilion and never looked back.

Who would have thought Jingyan would go before him?

He should know by now fate did not grant favors. But this wound was fresh, and he was surprised he could still feel. His old life—petitions and protocol, ambitious plans half done—bled away in trickles as he rode north, and by the time he was past the last Liang village, he had thoroughly let go of his worries for the country and thought only of holding and being held.

New habits formed in the gashing void. Every time his mind circled back to Jingyan, he rubbed the two lengths of hair looped tight around his finger and each other. The late Emperor, too ill to speak by then, had plucked the grayer strand from his own pillow and dropped it on his palm.

When the route became too steep for his living companion, he found a fallen branch Jingyan would have liked and climbed Meiling’s ridges for the last time. He could see everything from here, and distance was no more.

They say mountains are for the benevolent and waters are for the intelligent, Jingyan once said, but I am neither, and I choose—

He gripped his stick and felt Jingyan squeezing his hand back harder.