Chapter 3

Still, that reward meant the emperor wasn't going to punish us.

The route had taken a few detours, but fortunately everything was back on track.

We'd been awarded A Banquet of a Hundred Flowers. The Noble Consort was jealous. Our rank had gone up.

Perfect. Absolutely, utterly perfect!

More importantly, becoming a Talented Lady meant—we could eat meat!

We were stuffing ourselves, moved almost to tears, when someone knocked at the door.

It was the male lead's trusted attendant, Eunuch Zhao.

"Greetings, Lady Yong."

He beamed. "Wonderful news, my lady!"

He fastened a palace flower ornament to our door.

"Eunuch Zhao, what is this...?"

He smiled at us. "His Majesty has turned over your name tablet again tonight!"

Huh?

That evening, I went to the male lead's bedchamber.

Yes, it was my turn with the body again.

I'd only won control twice, and both times I'd landed our only opportunities to sleep with him.

There'd been a slight mishap last time. I clenched a fist in secret.

But tonight, I was going to put my hundred gigabytes of classified research into practice!

"Careful, An An. That bastard's definitely planning to settle the lake business with us."

"Agreed."

"I swear this emperor's a raving lunatic. Watch yourself, An An."

I steadied myself. "It's fine. If anything goes wrong, at least you'll all be buried with me."

My coworkers: "...What?"

When we entered, the male lead was seated at his desk.

Once again, he'd lit just one lamp. The dim, flickering light made me wonder...

Was he nearsighted?

"Greetings, Your Majesty."

I bowed respectfully.

His lips curved slightly. He beckoned me forward.

Only then did I notice he was holding the artist's painting from yesterday.

"Your Majesty, that painting..."

"Who taught you to paint like this?"

Not just me—the whole screaming mob in my head was puzzled.

"What's he getting at?"

"What, has he seen Asuka too?"

"Maybe he's interested in the anime style," the scriptwriter mused. "But let's not be too specific. No need to invite trouble."

"Could someone else have been transported here?"

"Why not? Who says we're the only ones allowed?"

I nodded and told him, "When I was little, Your Majesty, I saw a scholar selling paintings at a market. I thought his work was interesting and tried to copy it."

"A scholar selling paintings?" He frowned. "Do you remember what he looked like? Where he lived?"

I shook my head at once. "It was many years ago. I don't know."

He thought for a long while, then suddenly brought out paper and a brush.

"Paint me another in this style."

Me: "...What?"

"What's he doing? Does he really love art that much?"

"Maybe he's just fascinated by a style nobody's seen in this era."

"Couldn't he ask at a normal time? Does it have to be during a bedtime summons?"

For all our complaints, years of exposure to the artist had rubbed off on me. I could turn out a fairly respectable drawing.

The male lead studied it for a long time.

Just as we began to think he'd stare at it all night, he put it down.

"It's late. Let's rest."

Maybe I was imagining it, but his voice seemed much gentler.

He spread his arms. Heart pounding, I hurried to help him undress.

Forget the paintings for now.

Tonight, I could finally show what I was made of!

I lay down on the bed and gave him a sweet smile.

But halfway through taking off my clothes, I suddenly realized—I couldn't move again!

We'd spent too long painting. It was past midnight, and control had changed hands.

"Who?" I screamed in anguish. "Who stole my big moment?!"

The long night stretched ahead. The room was terribly quiet.

The person at the controls was—the programmer.

Me: "...What?"

My coworkers: "...What?"

The programmer: "..."

"Talented Lady Yong, what are you waiting for?"

The male lead's voice came from above.

Talented Lady Yong.

This time, "Brave" really was the word for it.

4.

Maybe there was something wrong with the male lead. Maybe the programmer had simply done too good a job.

Either way, he was summoning us every few days now.

Yesterday, he'd even promoted us to Lady of Handsome Fairness.

Under this heavy "burden of love," we finally lived up to expectations—and got pregnant.

That day, the programmer was eating when nausea suddenly struck. He retched and threw up everything.

"Oh my God! What's wrong?" The artist's eyes went wide.

"Was the project lead so bad in bed yesterday that remembering it made you sick?" I asked anxiously.

"Yes, he's the worst I've ever seen. Even the team lead's better!" the scriptwriter muttered.

"Don't drag one person down to flatter another!" The project lead slammed the table. "And are you insulting me?"

You could lose the question mark.

We thought no more of it.

Until the imperial physician knelt and announced at the top of his voice:

"Congratulations, my lady! You are with child!"

We all froze.

After a long silence, the programmer managed one trembling word.

"Reward."

As the palace servants cheered, his vision went black. He fainted.

When we woke again, the male lead was sitting by the bed with a faint smile.

"Lady Yong, you've done very well."

He patted our hand. "Rest assured. Whatever happens, I will protect your child."

Fighting the urge to vomit, the programmer said, "Thank you, Your Majesty."

The male lead waved a hand.

"Announce it. Lady Yong is carrying an imperial heir. Reward her with a thousand taels of gold!"

"Don't worry."

He dangled another enormous promise before us.

"When the child is born, I'll make you a Consort. If it's a boy, and he's exceptionally bright, I'll name him Crown Prince..."

That was such a lot of pie in the sky that we all nearly choked on it.

Pressing state business took the male lead away, leaving the programmer alone with his anguish.

Pregnancy, though, was something we all had to bear together.

Perhaps to soothe his fragile soul, the random assignment didn't give him the body again for dozens of days.

Which meant the rest of us got to experience the joys of morning sickness.

"Urgh... I'm never having a baby. Never!" the scriptwriter declared between bouts of vomiting.

"Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Mom." The artist's eyes filled with tears.

The team lead was vomiting so violently that even his usually inexhaustible gift of gab deserted him.

"I have a question," the finance manager asked weakly. "When this baby is born, whose child will it be?"

That stumped us all.

Good point.

We were all carrying it. So who got to claim it once it was born?

In the end, fairness prevailed. We decided—the child belonged to all of us!

The moment we'd settled that, an invitation arrived from the empress.

The empress?

"That's not right. According to the plot, she shouldn't show up until we're banished to the Cold Palace."

"Why's she looking for us already?"

"Maybe getting pregnant sped things up," I mused. "She doesn't care about winning favor, but she certainly cares about the child."

The empress. The novel's final boss. The harem's resident expert at making pregnancies disappear.

A daughter of the Grand General's household, she had never had children of her own.

In the original plot, after the heroine lost her rank and was banished to the Cold Palace, the empress offered her a helping hand and successfully drew her into her camp.

Then, wanting the heroine to bear a child, she pushed her back into the emperor's bed and set another round of torment-filled romance in motion.

"She's rotten to the core in the book. How about we don't go?"

"Yeah. She can't mean us any good."

"No. If we turn her down, people will think favor's gone to our head." I shook my head. "She's not like the Noble Consort. She's not arrogant—she holds grudges. If we refuse, she'll quietly remember it."

After a short silence, we got up anyway.

Today's driver—the team lead.

We made our anxious way to the Palace of Phoenix Grace. The empress was waiting.

"Lady Yong, sit."

She smiled faintly at us.

"I haven't had a chance to congratulate you on your pregnancy. I thought you should rest first and visit once you were feeling stronger."

The team lead nodded automatically.

"Just be more careful next time."

Me: "...What?"

My coworkers: "...What?"

"You're not the team lead anymore!" I screamed in despair.

He paused. Apparently he'd only just remembered.

The empress's expression didn't change. Still smiling, she invited us to sit.

She certainly knew how to bide her time.

A warm cup of tea was placed in our hands. She watched us closely, as though silently urging us to drink.

"There's nothing wrong with this tea, is there?"

"Surely she wouldn't. She cares so much about her reputation. She wouldn't poison us in her own rooms."

"But won't refusing it be a slap in her face?"

"Maybe she's just testing us?"

"Wait." After days of silence, the programmer suddenly spoke. "Don't drink yet."

"Why? Did you spot something?" I asked.

"Not yet. But I have a theory."

The empress was watching like a hawk, though, and every person in the Palace of Phoenix Grace belonged to her.

Refusing might cause trouble.

"It's fine. Leave it to me."

The team lead pretended to smell the tea. His eyes immediately lit up.

"Yutian Longjing?"

The empress hesitated. "You know it?"

"This is wonderful stuff!" He launched into a speech. "Goodness, you have no idea. You couldn't buy tea like this for a fortune..."

"The way I see it, well, you know, this is very good. And what exactly makes it good? Well, the thing is, it's good. So when we talk about this tea, what makes it good is that it's in this particular state of being—"

He spoke with ringing conviction and all the force of a keynote address.

Clearly, this was the empress's first encounter with someone who could say so much while saying absolutely nothing.

His rhetorical powers held her so spellbound that she actually began nodding off!

Which also proved that falling asleep during team meetings was not my fault!

By the time she came to, the tea was stone cold. He seized the chance to decline it on the grounds that cold tea wasn't any good.

Before leaving the Palace of Phoenix Grace, we glanced back.

Seated at the head of the room, the empress watched us with a deeply shadowed gaze.

On the way home, the programmer kept urging us along.

"Forget her. Get back and look at A Banquet of a Hundred Flowers!"

We'd left the embroidery intact and hanging in our room so nobody would discover the secret letter inside.

Even if someone knew it was there, they couldn't very well take the thing apart in broad daylight.

Back in our room, we dismissed everyone and carefully unpicked the embroidery's seams with a needle.

"Oh my God. How is this possible?"

There was no secret letter in A Banquet of a Hundred Flowers.

Only a very old golden-dragon sachet.

"I knew it. I know what's going on," the programmer said.

"What a coincidence. So do I," said the project lead.

"Funny you should say that. So do I," said the scriptwriter.

Me: "...What?"

The rest of our coworkers: "...What?"

What was this?

Had you three started your own private club?

5.

Once the project lead explained, we finally understood.

Qingqing: Tears Like Snow was so popular that it had spawned a whole range of spin-off products.

"Remember how we recently partnered with the IP to develop a new game based on the novel?" he asked.

"But isn't our project finished?"

The artist was confused. "And the game's story isn't much different from the book."

The project lead shook his head. "True, but we added a little more afterward."

Apparently, once the game was finished, he'd thought it over and decided that making the main storyline too close to the novel would drive players away.

So after development was complete, he'd discussed it with the programmer and scriptwriter, and together they'd designed a hidden route.

That route was still only a rough framework, with its story under construction. The rest of us knew nothing about it.

"You're saying we're on the hidden route now?" I asked.

The programmer nodded. "And... I think I've worked out why we ended up here."