Irrationally, he feels like he’s been caught. But Jiang Yanli knows. She’s known for a while; she knew even before he himself knew. But they’ve never - they’ve never actually talked about it, let alone… this. Whatever this is. Is he a bad husband? He feels like he should be, but Jiang Yanli isn't upset at him for it. If anything she's - she keeps pushing him toward Wen Ning, making excuses for Wen Ning to spend more time with them, and more bewilderingly, with him. He doesn’t get it, but he’s grateful - grateful that she loves him and trusts him like this, that she’s so unbothered by his... His odd, misplaced attraction to their flatmate. -- A companion piece/alternate POV for the first scene in Soft touch, soft heart by Verse.

It's been months since Jiang Cheng has last seen his lovers. To make up for it, he comes to Qinghe bearing a gift.

The thought had been niggling at the back of his mind quite a bit lately. He wasn’t showing Shang Qinghua proper obeisance, was he? They’d grown so comfortable in their roles - Mobei-Jun as Shang Qinghua’s king, and Shang Qinghua as his dutiful servant - that they hadn’t thought to… stop. It was how it had always been. But things were different, now, weren’t they? They’d been different for a long time now. To ignore that wasn’t proper. That stops now, Mobei-Jun decides. His ancestors would be rolling in their graves to see him ignore the proper rites of courtship - the fact that he and Shang Qinghua were already mated besides. He was not raised to be some kind of country rube, as much as being sequestered so far up north might imply otherwise. Shang Qinghua was his partner, and, with all factors properly calculated, the more powerful of the two. It was only proper that Mobei-Jun display an appropriate level of submission to his better. -- Mobei-Jun realizes with increasing clarity that he wants to serve Shang Qinghua. Shang Qinghua does NOT pick up on it.