EPISODE 13 RECAP
The emperor can’t sleep that night. He keeps thinking about the empress’ warning regarding Xiaoyanzi and the boys. At one point, he decides to pay Xiaoyanzi a surprise visit.
When the emperor gets to Xiaoyanzi’s palace, however, a beautiful, melancholy, gut-punching voice reaches his ears. It’s Ziwei, she’s singing her favorite song. Xiaoyanzi hears a noise outside and is quite sure it’s a spy. She flies out but is caught by the emperor. Always count on Xiaoyanzi to turn a serious moment into laughter.
The emperor comes in and requests another round of that song. Ziwei happily complies, but not before impressing the emperor with her tea. Everything she does is with great attention to detail and it pleases him very much.
When Ziwei is done singing, the emperor asks her where that song came from since it’s obviously not one of the classics he knows of; and it sounds pretty miserable. Ziwei gives the emperor the history of the song, occasionally throwing in hints about her mother:
My mom wrote that song.
She wrote it for my dad.
My dad left my mom for his “career”.
My mom died waiting.
When Ziwei is sure she has got the emperor hooked, she throws out one of the things her mother used to say: My mother spent all her life waiting for something that never happened, but she was grateful for it nonetheless; without it, her life would have been meaningless.
EMPEROR: *Why do orphan girls whose moms died tragically keep finding me?*
Xiaoyanzi takes this chance to bash unfaithful men. And the emperor is like, yeah yeah you’re still mad about your mom, I said I’m sorry already, what else do you want from me, kid?
The emperor hangs out with Xiaoyanzi and Ziwei for almost the whole night. The one guard who comes in to remind the emperor that it has passed midnight is told to get out immediately, who cares about night routine when you can play chess with Ziwei and watch her gracefully lose on purpose?
At dawn, Lady Ling has to come to remind the emperor that he still has a country to run. He leaves in a great mood. Lady Ling, however, mulls over the fact that the emperor has spent the night away from her for the first time in a long time.
That day, Nanny Rong spies on them again. Xiaoyanzi catches her and strikes her as a warning. I’m pretty sure Yongqi could have done something, but he doesn’t. Nobody likes Nanny Rong.
Next, the girls stop by Yongqi’s place. Here’s a super easy question: guess who’s waiting for Ziwei there?
That’s right, it’s Er’kang.
Xiaoyanzi tells Yongqi and Er’tai to leave the room so Ziwei and Er’kang can catch up. But Ziwei is all shy and like, catch up? Who needs to catch up? Stay, everybody, stay and talk.
And Er’kang is like, would you stop it, woman? Our friends are committing treason to give us time here.
Xiaoyanzi and the other two threaten to stay for real. In the end, Er’kang has to bow to Xiaoyanzi to make her leave. Haha.
Ziwei and Er’kang are alone. They pretend to social-distance for a while but not for long.
He congratulates her on gaining the emperor’s attention. Ziwei is currently having so much fun with the emperor that she has a wild idea: maybe let’s never tell the emperor the truth, I like it when I speak in riddles and he guesses the answers. Ziwei kind of has a high level of respect for intellect and intelligence, she’s like, there’s a chance we may fail and die, but this mind game is so fun I can’t resist.
With the business regarding the emperor out of the way, Er’kang moves on to the less appealing part of their talk.
HIM: Do you miss me?
HER: No.
HIM: OK, anything you wanna tell me?
HER: “No” was a lie.
Oh… kay. That’s one minute of my life you could have saved, Ziwei. Why couldn’t you just answer the man’s question honestly the first time if you did it in the end, anyway?