[ it's strange to be in competition with her own memory, but jiang yanli is, if nothing else, realistic. given where he was raised, he can't have heard good things about her; rumour and opinion won't have stopped simply with her death. and he was viciously protective of the idea of his parents, thinking the two of them a trick. a joke, at his expense. how many times had they been used against him, to have that be his immediate assumption?
she doesn't know. there's a lot she doesn't know, really. years of it. an entire childhood where she was a name on a tablet stretches between them. and yet, just that day she had held him in her arms, had prepared letters for future tutors, had managed an entire shichen of him asleep against her shoulder as a-cheng told her of the most recent renovations.
even knowing, logically, that he's an adult, she won't be able to sleep until she sees her son. so, selfishly, she's at his door, tapping lightly enough that she hopes she won't wake him if he's already fallen asleep. ] A-Ling?
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she doesn't know. there's a lot she doesn't know, really. years of it. an entire childhood where she was a name on a tablet stretches between them. and yet, just that day she had held him in her arms, had prepared letters for future tutors, had managed an entire shichen of him asleep against her shoulder as a-cheng told her of the most recent renovations.
even knowing, logically, that he's an adult, she won't be able to sleep until she sees her son. so, selfishly, she's at his door, tapping lightly enough that she hopes she won't wake him if he's already fallen asleep. ] A-Ling?