Li Chengjing didn’t seem to expect this reason. He raised his eyebrows and couldn’t help but smile: “Look at the sky outside. Do you know what time it is? You are still going to put on makeup and get dressed?”
Cheng Yujin followed his gaze and took a look outside. They were deep in the palace, and darkness quickly came right after the sunset. Everywhere looked dark and gloomy, majestic but repressing and hierarchical, making people almost feel suffocated.
Cheng Yujin also realized that her reason was a bit ridiculous. At home, she never redressed or put on her makeup again after taking a bath at night. She wasn’t that sick, okay? But…there was Li Chengjing here. How could it be the same?
Cheng Yujin fell silent, but Li Chengjing didn’t care. He pulled Cheng Yujin to the couch he was sitting on just now. He motioned her to sit down, then took a clean towel from the hanger on the side. When Li Chengjing turned around again, he saw Cheng Yujin still standing unmoved. Her eyes widened, as if seeing something unbelievable.
Helpless, Li Chengjing could only say to her: “Sit down. I’m just going to dry your hair, nothing more. Why are you looking at me like that?”
Cheng Yujin’s lips moved for a while before she finally spoke with great difficulty: “Your Highness, how…how can I bother you with this.”
“Call me by name, and stop using polite speech.” Cheng Yujin didn’t know which part of her sentence pricked Li Chengjing’s nerve. His expression suddenly darkened. Seeing Cheng Yujin still refused to sit, he reached out his hand and pulled her to his side. Cheng Yujin’s strength obviously couldn’t be compared with Li Chengjing’s. She lost her balance and almost fell down if not for the strong hand that firmly supported her body.
Li Chengjing held Cheng Yujin’s elbow with one hand. With such a close distance, he was shocked to find that Cheng Yujin was actually more slender than he thought. She was slender enough that he almost could embrace her body with just one hand. After helping Cheng Yujin sit on the couch, Li Chengjing didn’t retract his hand. Instead, he moved her position slightly so that her back was facing him, then he took her long wet hair into his hand and wrapped it with the towel.
While drying her hair, Li Chengjing said: “I am indeed older than you. But our age differs by only five years. There is no need for you to speak so politely to me, right?”
It was obvious nonsense. There were so many officials in the courts, and most of them were older than Li Chengjing. But he was the Crown Prince. Did those officials dare to speak to the Crown Prince without a polite tone?
Cheng Yujin vaguely remembered a past event. At that time, Li Chengjing asked what she thought of an older man. Cheng Yujin thought that he was referring to Zhai Yanlin, so she vigorously debased the so-called older man. Now, looking at his uneasy appearance, could it be that he actually referred to himself?
Cheng Yujin was speechless. She really didn’t expect that the Crown Prince was actually so…It seemed that Li Chengjing himself was the one who cared about the age gap the most!
Cheng Yujin said calmly: “After all, I called you ‘Ninth Uncle’ for a long time. It’s normal for me to talk you you politely like I’m talking to an elder.”
Li Chengjing’s hands paused. He turned her around and looked at her. Something in his look made Cheng Yujin instinctively tense. Thinking that she had said something wrong, she immediately became vigilant: “Your Highness asked His Majesty to announce to the world that you were found in Cheng family. You don’t want to deny your identity as Cheng Yuanjing. You were indeed my Ninth Uncle before, so I just spoke casually. Your Highness won’t be angry, right?”
“Cheng Yuanjing is also me. There is nothing to angry about.” Li Chengjing’s tone was insipid, but his gaze fell to something behind Cheng Yujin. Curious, Cheng Yujin turned around and found nothing special there, except for a pair of red dragon and phoenix wedding candles.
Cheng Yujin was confused. She thought that she had missed something and looked around carefully. Li Chengjing held Cheng Yujin’s hair and said: “Your hair is so long. Is it always this hard to wring it dry?”
Cheng Yujin hurriedly turned her head. She pulled her hair away from Li Chengjing’s hand and looked at it distressingly: “Long hair should be carefully maintained. It cannot be rubbed too hard, let alone be wrung! Let my hair go; I will do it myself.”
Li Chengjing grew up surrounded by either men or eunuchs. He didn’t understand what a woman was like, so he had no choice but to listen to Cheng Yujin and let her hair go. He turned to the side and saw Cheng Yujin carefully wrapping her hair section by section, using a soft cloth to carefully absorb the moisture from her hair without rubbing it.
So this was what she meant when she said that long hair should be carefully maintained? It must be impossible for an amateur to learn this kind of high technique in a short time.
Li Chengjing watched with interest for a long time and couldn’t help but look at the burning red wedding candles again. Calculating the time, it should be the third quarter of the hour of boar now, just some time before midnight.1
Did Cheng Yujin remember that today was their wedding night?
T/N:
Tuesday’s late chapter
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