Everyone in the capital knows that Sheng Tinghe and Shen Tingzhao grew up together. They are childhood friends and playful rivals.
He thinks she is too noisy, and she thinks he is putting on airs.
She chases a butterfly and tumbles into the flower bed. From the pavilion, he leisurely sips his tea and says, "Clumsy."
She practices the qin and hits a wrong note. Passing beneath her window, he chuckles, "What a racket."
Sheng Tinghe gets so angry that she tears up his books, sneaks his pastries, and unilaterally declares that she has broken off their friendship for the nth time.
Until one day, Sheng Tinghe accidentally finds an art album in his study.
She opens it and finds page after page of herself: climbing a tree, battling crickets, getting candy stuck to her teeth...
The ink on the newest page is still wet.
It shows her, cheeks puffed in a huff, and him, secretly watching her.
Sheng Tinghe: ???
*
Later, her family arranges for Sheng Tinghe to meet a young man who placed third in the imperial examinations.
She hears that he is gentle and refined, and prefers quiet, demure women.
She goes to the meeting with great trepidation, only to run into a familiar figure beside the pavilion.
Shen Tingzhao leans against a pillar in the covered walkway, idly playing with the handkerchief she had somehow left with him. His voice drifts over lightly.
"I hear someone wants to marry a refined scholar?"
He raises his eyes to meet hers.
"Would someone like me not do?"
*
Later still, Shen Tingzhao remains the aloof, arrogant young minister in public, but in private he is always clinging to his wife.
"Qingqing, nobody paid any attention to me after court today."
"Qingqing, my hand hurts. Blow on it for me."
"Qingqing, yesterday you praised that young general next door for looking dashing."
The once-composed and self-controlled Shen Tingzhao buries his face in the crook of Sheng Tinghe's neck, his voice muffled.
"But you clearly said I was the best-looking."
Theme: Of the countless forms I give those beneath my pen, my heart holds only one.
