The Emperor’s Runaway Lover

When the two returned to the parking lot, it was already noon of the following day. After raging for a night and a day, the sandstorm finally died down.

“Tsk.” Fu Yucheng gave the boy a once-over and shook his head. “You brat, you really need to clean up.”

The boy lowered his head and looked at his hands. There was yellow sand and dirt underneath his nails and scrapes on his palms. There was no need to mention what his body and hair looked like.

Fu Yucheng bent down, pulled the broken drawer under the sofa open, and pulled out an old towel from the mess of fabrics, throwing it in the direction of the boy. “Just take this for now. I will buy you a new one another day.”

The towel Fu Yucheng threw landed on the boy’s head. The boy could just barely see it.

It was a thin, old towel that had clearly seen better days. It had been roughly washed, and now the texture wasn’t even remotely fluffy or soft, nor did it smell fresh.

The boy closed his eyes, feeling the prickly fibers of the towel brushing against his cheeks. There was an unidentifiable, strange smell at the tip of his nose. It was a faintly stale, musty smell, reminiscent of soap and mothballs, and possibly something else.

It didn’t smell good. However, surprisingly, he didn’t find it gross either.

“Brat, why are you just standing there? Did you get frightened by the sandstorm? It’s not such a big deal, come on, I’ve seen bigger sandstorms several times.”

Seeing the boy’s dumbfounded expression, Fu Yucheng couldn’t avoid feeling a bit amused, and his gloomy mood lightened.

Forget it, isn’t it just another brat in his life?

Adding another pair of chopsticks to the table and making do with what they had, it’d be a few years of effort at most.

“These are my old clothes, just wear them,” Fu Yucheng approached him and stuffed a pile of clean clothes into the boy’s arms.

He glanced at the other’s face and hair, which were covered in dust and sand, and felt compelled to yell. “Don’t laze around, you have to clean up. You’re so dirty even I can’t stomach it!”

Before the boy could react, Fu Yucheng rudely shoved him into the bathroom, and then closed the bathroom door behind his back with a bang.

Fu Yucheng’s voice was hard to hear through the door. “By the way, there’s a water shortage, and there’s no shower. You have to wash with hot water and a bucket. Did you hear me?”

“I heard you,” the boy responded, with his back against the bathroom door.

Mindlessly, he looked at the bathroom where, two days ago, he had cleaned linens and blankets, and simply brushed at his own clothes.

The bathroom was all metal. It was extremely small and could only accommodate one person standing up. In the corner to the right was an old-fashioned toilet. In the corner to the left were three small shelves made of wood. Next to it, the faucet was covered in limescale.

The old-fashioned faucet was leaking due to its age, and drops of water fell slowly and steadily into an iron bucket below, making a ‘plink, plink’ sound. In the small space, it sounded very clear.

There was nothing else in the bathroom besides these things.

For a while,the boy leaned against the door. After a long time, he breathed out very softly, and then slowly slid down to sit on the cold bathroom floor.

Until this point, he had been feeling as if he were just barely anchored to reality.

He had been accepted.

From now on, he would live with this so-called ‘Fu Yucheng’.

However, what would happen in the future?

Fu Yucheng was still standing outside the bathroom door. He was a little worried about this kid not knowing how to use the old-fashioned faucet. He waited for several minutes, but didn’t hear any water.

“Hey,” Fu Yucheng got a little impatient, and couldn’t avoid raising his voice, “listen, brat, turn the tap to the left for hot water, and turn it right for cold water. There’s a bucket and a scoop under the sink, and the soap is on the shelf. Make do with those.”

“Oh,” the boy said after coming back to his senses.

He immediately realized that the other might not have heard him clearly through the bathroom door, so he raised his voice and replied: “I got it.”

“Since you got it, why don’t you wash up already?” Fu Yucheng murmured, and walked away from the door.

The boy stood up and placed the clean towels and clothes in his arms on top of the wooden shelf. He took off his dirty clothes, carefully folded them into a small ball, and placed them onto the shelf on the bottom.

He stared at the strange-looking faucet, hesitated a little, and slowly and tentatively turned the vintage, centuries-old faucet to the side. Faucets like this couldn’t be seen in the Ecoregions since a long time ago.

A thin stream of water fell into the iron basin.

After a while, the water gradually warmed up, but it stayed as a thin strand. It took a long time for it to fill up the bucket.

The boy tested the temperature of the water with his hands, scooped up the water from the bucket with the water scoop, carefully wet his hair, and turned to look at the shelf on the side.

The wooden shelf was barren. There was a yellow plastic duck the size of a palm, looking rather ridiculous. Next to the duck was a cracked, rough porcelain bowl, barely usable as a soap dish. It contained half a piece of the most ordinary, plain, unscented pale yellow soap.

Obviously, the man, Fu Yucheng, washed his hair, himself and his clothes all with this one soap.

The boy blinked and suddenly remembered the half piece of soap at the kitchen counter’s sink. They must have been a single piece before. Now one was responsible for washing the dishes and the other for bathing.

He picked up the half piece of soap from the broken bowl, dipped it carefully in water and rubbed it slowly between his hands. After a short while, it formed a thick layer of lather between his palms, and he started to wash his hair thoroughly.

Touching a mark on the back of his neck, he paused briefly, then rubbed at it with renewed vigor, as if trying to wash it off.

After almost an hour, with a ‘creak’, the bathroom door finally opened again.

Fu Yucheng was leaning against the workbench by the sofa, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and tapping at the window pane with the other to tease a small lizard that was on the opposite side of the glass.

Upon hearing the sound of the bathroom door opening, he turned his head towards it, looking indifferently. “Finally, it’s been ages. You brat, you took as long as a little girl.”

Before he finished that sentence, for an instant, Fu Yucheng felt taken aback. Then he let out a laugh.

The boy was standing on the floor in front of the bathroom, with his feet bare and his short wet hair in a mess of curls.

He was wearing an old gray T-shirt that had gotten bleached wash after wash on top, and a pair of dark blue sweatpants underneath. They were Fu Yucheng’s old hand-me-downs, but they were clean. That wasn’t the problem.

It was just that the boy hadn’t shot up yet, and Fu Yucheng was tall and slender. As he was now, the boy only reached up to Fu Yucheng’s shoulders. The pants were naturally longer than his legs, so he had to roll the hem up multiple times and it looked quite ridiculous.

The boy was a bit uncomfortable at first, and grew even more confused when he heard Fu Yucheng’s laughter. He subconsciously pulled at the hem of the T-shirt with the palm of his hand, and his face looked like he’d sucked on a lemon.

Seeing the boy pursing his mouth with an unhappy expression, Fu Yucheng reluctantly restrained his laughter, and called him over. “Come here, let me take a good look.”

The boy hesitated, but still walked right over to Fu Yucheng.

Fu Yucheng squinted and looked at the boy carefully under the sunlight, coming in through the workbench window.

The kid had apparently cleaned himself thoroughly, and his neck was still flushed. Probably because of the heat in the bathroom, his ears and cheeks were all pink, and he no longer looked cold, resembling instead an innocent little white rabbit.

Fu Yucheng murmured to himself that if this little brat fell into the hands of the cannibal sand thieves, they’d have a feast. Stewed small white rabbits, the meat stayed tender and melted in your mouth.

The boy naturally didn’t know Fu Yucheng’s evil thoughts. He stared down at his trousers, with the hems rolled up multiple times over, and his expression was quite disgruntled.

Seeing his awkward look, Fu Yucheng wanted to laugh again.

He was afraid of hurting the kid’s childish self-esteem, so he could just barely let out a snort. He patted a handful of the boy’s hair, which now felt moist and refreshing. It was quite pleasant. “Brat, don’t worry. You will grow taller in the future, I promise.”

He paused, apparently thinking of something again. “By the way, I can’t keep calling you brat forever.”

The boy turned his head slightly, staring at the quietly burning, blood-red sunset beyond the window. “I told you, before I used to be called No. 29.”

“Oh, I remember.” Fu Yucheng’s lips curled. “But let’s forget about it. It reminds me of a prisoner’s number, it doesn’t sound good.”

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As he thought it over, he subconsciously lightly rubbed his chin. “Or I could give you a name. Don’t you look at me with that face, I also spent many years studying.”

“…” The boy stared at him, as if he didn’t understand what Fu Yucheng meant.

What was he saying?

Name him?

“If you don’t say anything, I will assume that you agree. Well, what sort of name would be good? It’d be better if it’s catchy, with a good meaning, no rare characters, and not too many strokes.”

While pondering intensely, Fu Yucheng turned his head to look at the boy carefully, and then raised his eyebrows, deep in thought. The kid had been washed clean, his eyebrows were jet black and his skin was like snow, as white as fresh milk and without any blemishes.

At this point, this white and tender brat looked completely different from the dirty child he had first met out in the desert.

“Got it.”

His eyes lit up slightly, and he lightly snapped his fingers. “Last name Bai1, and first name Mo2. With the meaning of arising from white clouds above a great desert. What do you think, kid?”

Secretly, in his heart, the reason for the surname Bai was because the kid looked as white as a dolled up girl from a fashion magazine. However, he couldn’t say that, because children can’t take jokes, and he’d end up sulking.

White desert.

The boy blinked blankly, not knowing how to answer for a while. He didn’t really care about having a name.

After all, ‘No. 29’ or ‘Brat’, these were simply nonsense nicknames. Just a pronoun or a form of address, it was all the same, and didn’t change his identity.

Bai Mo.

Was it different from ‘No. 29’ or ‘Brat’?

He felt a bit confused.

Bai Mo.

The boy subconsciously mulled over the two words, ‘Bai Mo’, over and over in his heart. Gradually, he felt a very strange sensation.

Bai Mo, this was his name.

His own, unique name.

“Bai Mo,” he whispered, then repeated it again. “Bai Mo.”

“What is it, do you not like it?” Fu Yucheng felt a little disappointed, seeing the boy keep his head down and speaking too quietly to be heard. “I don’t think it’s bad, but if you don’t like it, we can go visit the proprietress in a couple days and borrow her precious antique Kangxi dictionary.3 We can browse it and find a good name.”

“I don’t dislike it.” The boy interrupted him suddenly, lifting his head.

Fu Yucheng raised one eyebrow, looking at the brat in front of him.

The boy looked directly at the other and nodded slightly. “Bai Mo, it’s great. I like it very much.”

Several centuries later, historians would make many strange conjectures about the White Emperor, known for his indifference and reclusiveness. About his name and his family background. They would argue until their faces went red countless times, without, however, reaching any singular, incontrovertible conclusion.

The mainstream opinion in academia would be that the mysterious White Emperor, Bai Mo, came from an ancient and low-key Bai family from the Ecoregions.

There are also many theories about the Mo character in his name.

However, none of them would have thought that the source of the White Emperor’s name had actually been very casual, even trivial.

It happened during an ordinary afternoon.

At the Twilight Belt, the sandstorm that had been making a ruckus all night had just stopped. In its place, the vast sky looked particularly transparent and blue. Beyond the car window, there was a bloody, neverending sunset.

Fu Yucheng leaned against the workbench, holding a cup of steaming, inferior quality coffee in his hand while deep in thought. The warm orange sunlight poured in through the window, covering the man’s handsome face in a hazy and mellow texture.

“What is it, do you not like it?” He sighed. “I don’t think it’s bad.”

“I don’t dislike it.” The young, future Emperor, with his head down, interrupted the man.

He raised his head and looked directly at the other, and spoke in a soft but firm voice, “Bai Mo, it’s great. I like it very much.”

A boy has a name! Is that reference too outdated already? And we’re on chapter 10, what a milestone, we’re 10% done~

Thank you everyone for reading, specially to kayrahiss for always commenting ( ^v^)/ and shout out to my editor Wintery once again!

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Footnotes

白 meaning white.漠, meaning desert, but it can also mean indifferent or aloof. It is a bit similar to the 莫 Mo family name, mentioned earlier, but it’s not the same character.Standard Chinese dictionary during the 18th and 19th centuries, compiled in 1710 under the Kangxi Emperor. It contains 47000 characters, most of which are now in disuse.