rosebeetles are lovely beautiful gay creatures

Bonus:

It’s worse than before…

fan changyu: so, yeah, you'll marry into my household, but it's just so i can keep our house! pls don't misunderstand, we can divorce anytime after

xie zheng: hmm

fan changyu: hey i know you have to leave once you're better, so just let me know if you'll go with me when we leave the town or if you prefer to stay here, i can prep the divorce papers!

xie zheng: ...i'll go with you.

fan changyu: so sorry this is embarrassing people keep expecting us to consummate our marriage so they're spying on us from outside but i have no hidden motives at all, we can just sleep in the same bed and nothing would even happen

xie zheng, rolling over so he's on top of her: well if we're putting on a show might as well do it properly

fan changyu: *accepts this and moves on* btw are you leaving soon? it should be fine, i won't cling to you, i promise! don't worry

xie zheng, visibly flustered that they're so close to each other: what who's leaving

later on,

fan changyu: oh no yan zheng got dragged into war he probably would like the divorce papers so he can at least be free to do whatever he wants

言正. No radicals - his name cannot be split apart anymore. He cannot be "broken down" anymore than to Yan Zheng.

Thinking about how Changyu found him and treated him like just a man on the brink of death. Just a man. When was the last time when he was treated like just a person and not a weapon of war, a sword of the state to be wielded? When his parents were alive.

When given the choice to introduce himself to a stranger who knows none of his backstory (the good, bad, scary) that's what he chose. He chose to start from as close to zero as he could get.

Was it out of survival initially? Yes! But after things changed where it would have objectively benefitted him to be the Marquis (money, the politics with the Magistrate) he still maintained the identity of Yan Zheng - just a man, just a matrilocal husband.

It hurts when Changyu calls him by his titles (one because it's Changyu doing it) because there's no one else that he can feel human with except her. It feels like she's rejecting not just Xie Zheng the marquis but Yan Zheng the human.

Endpaper artwork for volume 4 deluxe hardcover