QT: Don't fall in love with the Male Lead

Xi Zirui hears flashes of voices, the sound of someone screaming. 

A child's voice crying his name.

He feels himself being lifted in someone's arms. It's pure agony.

He's being taken somewhere, but he can't lift his eyelids long enough to see where.

After some time he hears nothing at all.

---

The sound of trickling water disturbs his fitful sleep. Xi Zirui wakes up with a groan, he's laying on his front, and there's something viscous and slimy spread across his back. When he tries to switch positions the zing of pain that shoots up his spine reminds him of why that is a bad idea.

He looks around as best he can from the bed, and is surprised to find himself in an ample and well-appointed room. The open sliding doors lead to a lush courtyard, the fountain feeding a steady stream of water into a carp-filled pond is responsible for the sound of running water that woke him up.

This is not where he expected to wake up after Su Xueyi's ominous words.

The lavish room he finds himself in bears little resemblance to the dank cell he envisioned.

"Oh, Host is awake," Ni Ni says, sounding relieved. "Ni Ni is really sorry she wasn't able to assist Host at such a difficult time."

Xi Zirui snorts and pillows his head on his folded arms. What could have Ni Ni even helped him with?

"Well, nothing, that's what Ni Ni was apologizing for," her sheepish tone almost makes Xi Zirui laugh.

He suspects laughter will be in short supply in his near future, so he treasures the opportunity.

The other doors in the room fling open with a bang and Bai Mi comes storming in, followed by a score of maids.

"Oh, the harlot is awake, leave this Empress to deal with him," she says, and promptly turns around to shut the door in the befuddled maids' faces.

"I'd appreciate not being called whore, or any variation thereof, ever again," Xi Zirui says, turning his neck on the pillow to face Bai Mi when she sits down on the bed next to him.

"Well, they, and everyone else, need to believe this Empress hates little brother and is enjoying tormenting him," she says, eyeing the wounds across Xi Zirui's back cryptically. "I suspect that's why His Majesty agreed to let me take you to my rooms until your back heals enough to-to..."

Xi Zirui finishes the sentence for her. "Until I'm well enough to be sold to the brothel."

Bai Mi rolls her eyes at him. "Well, obviously that's not happening, this Empress and little brother's First Prince have been working tirelessly to ensure that doesn't come to pass."

That gives Xi Zirui pause. "How long was I unconscious?"

Bai Mi sighs and leans back on her arms. "A little over four days, little brother had a terrible fever that nearly killed him. First Prince stayed camped up in this Empress's room for hours. It was very aggravating."

Xi Zirui can imagine that was a struggle for both of them.

"How did Han Yu manage to visit me? Isn't his Majesty keeping him confined to his rooms?" He expects Han Yu's movements to be severely restricted, at least as long as Xi Zirui remains in the palace.

"It seems little brother and First Prince have amassed quite the few loyal supporters." When Xi Zirui gives her a quizzical look, she elaborates with a put-upon eyeroll. "Apparently the captain of the Palace Guard feels indebted to First Prince somehow, and has taken to keeping guard at First Prince's door, coincidentally during the night-shift when it's easier for him to help the Prince slip out undetected."

Cao Fei's lover, Jin Ranyu must feel indebted to Han Yu for keeping his and Cao Fei's secret, even after his was exposed to cruelly.

Bai Mi narrows her eyes shrewdly at him. "I'm sure little brother knows all about that."

The corner of Xi Zirui's lip ticks up in silent amusement. One thing he can say he learned from Bai Mi, "I look out for my own."

She meets Xi Zirui's half-smile with a smirk of her own. 

They have reached a sort of agreement between them. It's hard to say if in time they would have become friends, but for now there's a sort of grudging respect holding them together.

Xi Zirui feels less anxious, knowing that he's safe here, at least for now. He has no idea what Han Yu and Bai Mi plan to do next, but he's content on laying in bed and trying to forget the disturbing events in the throne room.

Every time his mind unwillingly conjures up those images it's as if his brain is split through with a thousand needles. It leaves him nauseous.

"Does little brother want the physician?" Bai Mi asks, noticing his wan face, not necessarily with concern in her voice but a passable imitation of it.

"No, I...it's nothing." He doesn't want to reminisce about it more than he has to. He doesn't want to think about Han Yu breaking out in uncontrollable sobs as Su Xueyi forced him to whip Xi Zirui, and he doesn't want to remember any of Su Xueyi's filthy, degrading words.

So, it's easier to say that everything is fine.

Bai Mi doesn't believe him, but Xi Zirui hurries to change the subject. "Han Yu believes elder sister killed her own baby in order to frame his mother, is that true?"

Xi Zirui doesn't know what posses him to ask that, other than that the pain might have addled his brain, but he realizes he wants to know the answer.

Bai Mi is a confusing person, full of incongruities. Like a lychee with its hard spiky peel that hides a soft white center. He wants to get to the meat of Bai Mi, the woman who killed him in the previous world, and who is trying to help save him in this one.

If she's upset or angry that he asked, she doesn't let it show. "What would little brother think if I told him it was true?"

Xi Zirui makes the mistake of trying to shrug, even in his prone position it pulls uncomfortably at his wounds. "I wouldn't think anything, which is why I asked elder sister."

She levels him with an accessing look, as if she's trying to take the measure of him. "Well, it is true," she sighs. "I'm not sorry about the baby, it's hard to love a child who our husband sired. If anything, I think I resented it, which isn't very motherly of me, but I wasn't concerned about that."

Xi Zirui hums in acquiescence. He doesn't think it's his place to give his opinion on the matter.

"And I did want to frame the former Empress, but I never expected His Majesty would have her executed. I expected him to exile her to some distant royal property. From our previous conversations, I thought I was doing her a favor." She lets out a self-deprecating snort, despite her insouciance Xi Zirui can tell this is one miscalculation she regrets.

"I should have known His Majesty wouldn't tolerate anything less than perfection among his harem."

"Has elder sister told First Prince this?" Xi Zirui asks, already anticipating the answer.

"Why? I don't need to justify my actions to anyone." 

No, he supposes she doesn't.

He chances at sideways glance at her pregnant belly. "And this child? Does elder sister find him hard to love too?"

Bai Mi rests her hand over her bump and smiles, sweet and unguarded, it makes her look younger than her years. "This child is not His Majesty's son."

Her doll-like face breaks out in such a radiant grin that Xi Zirui lets himself be swept up by it to.

Soon both of them are laughing uncontrollably. Xi Zirui's peals of laughter interrupted by the occasional grunt of pain due to the pressure on his wounded back.

"Who is the father?" Xi Zirui asks, wheezing a little.

"A handsome servant who caught my eye." Bai Mi's eyes shine with undisguised glee. "Little brother, this servant's son is going to sit on the Emperor's throne if it kills me."

Xi Zirui thinks that's an excellent idea.

---

He and Bai Mi talk some more, before she tells him he has to pretend to wail in pain so the servants outside will believe she's torturing him.

It's a fun time.

Night falls, and he grows antsy with the promise of seeing Han Yu again.

He wants to reassure him that he's alright, that now that they've made it through this, the worst is behind them, and that they can move on.

Ni Ni chimes. "With one correction, Host will die if the Emperor's favor drops to 0."

Oddly, it's still stuck on 73 and hasn't lowered since, which leaves Xi Zirui to arrive at the chilling conclusion that Su Xueyi is capable of brutally torturing someone he supposedly still has feelings for.

When Han Yu arrives, brought in stealthily through the courtyard and wearing servant's robes and headwrap, Bai Mi excuses herself to give them some privacy.

She and Han Yu share equally frosty looks of mutual understanding. 

Once they're alone, Han Yu kneels down by the headboard and cups Xi Zirui's hand in his palms.

"I was so worried for Zirui," he says, placing a fluttering kiss on Xi Zirui's chapped lips.

"I'm sorry to have worried Han Yu," Xi Zirui says, and sighs at the tranquility that seeps through his tired bones now that Han Yu is with him.

"Preparations have been made, now that Zirui is awake we can leave as soon as possible," he says looking longingly into Xi Zirui's eyes.

Han Yu tells him that Su Xueyi is determined to exile him, to where remains to be seen, since he's focusing on finding an appropriately desolate place. 

While Su Xueyi dallies, Han Yu has made arrangements for Xi Zirui to leave first, and lay low somewhere safe, before Han Yu joins him after losing the convoy meant to escort him to his place of exile.

Xi Zirui doesn't like the idea of leaving without Han Yu but he understands the merit of his plan.

Han Yu smiles indulgently and smooths out the worried wrinkle between Xi Zirui's eyebrows with his thumb. "Has Zirui given any thought to what he wants to do, once we get settled somewhere else?"

He can't say he has thought about it. He didn't think they would ever get the chance, to be honest.

He's thinking now, and it makes his heart flutter happily inside his chest.

"I want to live somewhere by the water," he says smiling, thinking about the sprawling metropolis he came from. "A lake or a river, somewhere in the south."

Smiling softly, Han Yu takes Xi Zirui's hands in his and drops a kiss to each of his knuckles. "Whatever Zirui wants."

"And what does Han Yu want?"

"If we're going to live by the water, then I want a boat, so that I might take Zirui to enjoy the sights."

He can't keep saying these things, it's not good for Xi Zirui's blood pressure.

"I thought Han Yu wanted to dedicate himself to fishing," he teases.

"Maybe I will, how hard can it be?" Han Yu asks, puffing out his chest. 

Even in plain servant's robes he looks breathtakingly beautiful.

Xi Zirui will never tire of admiring the sculpted planes of his face, the proud upwards slope of his nose, the full pillow of his lips, the dark eyes that can see right through his soul.

Perhaps because of the servant's robes, he looks achingly human too, devoid of that magazine page gloss that hung around him like a veil, even here in this ancient time. Much like whenever he saw the previous world's Han Yu fresh-faced and wearing plain clothes, Xi Zirui feels tender all over. 

Looking like this, stripped of the polish of his princely birthright, Han Yu looks like a young man who's offering to spend the rest of his life with Xi Zirui, even if it means they'll have nothing to their name.

That he can smile to sweetly, so openly, while standing on the ruins of his former life, makes Xi Zirui love him all that much more.