Southern Fine Wood

Tea is a fine tree of the southern lands.

Nan Lin had always thought the line Mu Jiu had written on a whim hinted at their surnames, and that it carried some special meaning. It did not. He had spent more time with Mu Jiu than anyone since childhood, yet gradually he could no longer be content with calling him only “Sir.”

“Xin Ran, Xin Ran, is there really no one else who calls you that besides Me?”

Mu Jiu kept telling himself that the Crown Prince was still young, so he could forget the deaths of his eight older brothers and spend every day with Nan Lin. But the years slipped by, and the little boy grew up. Suddenly, Mu Jiu realized that the Emperor was, after all, the Emperor. The Emperor was not Lin'er.

The pairing is as the title suggests: firmly Nan X Mu, no switching or breaking them up. Lord and subject, raising a child, younger man with older man, and so on ≥ ≤