CHAPTER 1
This is not happening to me!!!!!
This is not happening to me!!!!!
THIS IS NOT HAPPENING TO ME!!!!!
I woke up somewhere, I don’t know, with Hongbing beside me. People are wearing weird clothes, speaking to weird things and here I am on the street corner like a beggar barely awake with a slumbering guy next to me.
As the general of the night guardians and the prince of Daming, everything seemed a little too different. I look around cautiously, I guess it’s better to remain alert since you don’t know where you are right now. I shake Hongbing awake.
First mistake: Never shake an assassin awake
A sword on my neck was the result.
“Hongbing, what the heck? Put that down, it’s me!” I say as I push that deadly weapon away from my neck before he could take a chunk out of it(I don’t want to die, thank you very much!!!)His eyes widened a fraction before narrowing
“Where are we?” he asks me as he resheaths his sword. A quiet glare was pointed in my direction(still not fond of me, huh? Well, too bad now you are stuck with me for a while.)
“If I had known better, then we would have gotten an answer, and no, I didn’t drug you and drag you here if that is what you are thinking about”, I say as I look around more clearly.
(Yeah, it’s a street alright.)
“I did not say that!!!!”He hissed
“The implication was quite clear” I brushed the dirt out of my knees and stood up. My knees creaked painfully due to the effort. I guess at 33 years old, I am getting quite old.
I decided to go out. My curiosity won over caution. I have to hide my identity as a prince first, so I don’t demand that others give me information. The place wasn’t too big. White washed boxed buildings with windows, starkly different from ours, lay ahead of me. I went to one of the buildings with a pretty gate, a gold-plated sign with something written in bold colours. The lettering was somewhat similar to ours but yet it felt foreign; the letters just felt odd, out of place.
I was standing for quite some time, and the resident of that colourful bold sign, seeing me, came out. He was an elderly man with wrinkles under his eyes. He looked at me once over and started speaking in a language I couldn’t catch.
I tried replying in the best way I could, but the old geezer frowned as I went on.
Feigning civility the man finally gritted some English words out of his mouth (the one I learnt a little from an old friend of mine who insisted I learn it incase I got stuck somewhere. Thank god I learnt it)
“Can. You. Understand. Me?” he enunciated each word. I nodded once to show that I understood that part perfectly. He smiled, seemingly relieved that I could at least understand that.
“Do you. Know English?” he asked me. I brought my index finger and thumb close together, leaving a little gap ”A little...”The language felt weird in my mouth.
He sighed
“Chinese?”
“........”
“Uh...I guess?” I’m unsure whether their Chinese is similar to ours
“Do you know where and which year you are in at least?”
Silence....
“I don’t know....”I finally say (Well screw it! better to lose a little bit of face than trying to pretend I know something of this place.)
He looked over to the person standing behind me. While the rapid-fire interrogation was going on, Liu Hongbing had silently followed me like a vengeful ghost on a hunt and was leaning against the wall.
“Sigh,( He says something in Japanese before reverting to English )Come in....”
I got in first, then I handed out an olive branch to my partner, who was contemplating first-degree murder.“Come on, Hongbing, he is not dangerous” Even though I was not sure of that either, trust my instincts on this one, he is harmless, even a rookie could see that at a glance(unless he tries to poison someone, if that is what it is).
The interior was neat, the old man had sat down on a cushion, and he gestured towards both of us to sit on the two extra cushions that were lying there. There was a low table with a cloth covering it till the bottom, the ends trailed to the ground, and a peculiar black box was rounded at the corner, making some strange noises.
It showed a young woman speaking a foreign language, using a stick to point towards a chart. The chart was the one that instantly caught my attention. It showed a map of a small nation, which I have seen in the world map that was locked in a tiny cubicle far away from the prying eyes of the officials, the one which contains the secrets of the nation.
I have seen it only twice.
One was during the campaign against the Huns, and the second time was when Ji-Chuan, the 4th-ranked minister, successfully recreated the entire thing from scratch without any reference. There was a tiny nation just like this on that map, but the name remained elusive on my tongue.
“There will be heavy storms today," the old man said, returning carrying a tray containing three porcelain teacups and a steaming teapot.
“Here. Let. Me. Help. You.”I told him(with the limited vocabulary I have)to stand up and take the burden out of his hands, then gently placed it onto the table.
My armour clattered around, making a racket as I adjusted my footing. The cushion was not comfortable for sitting. I have to find the perfect angle before I can settle down perfectly.
The old man’s demeanour completely changed. He smiled warmly as he invited us for tea.“Youth these days they have no respect towards the elderly, at least young men like you can change for the better...”He muses in perfect Chinese.
I guess my eyes were bulging out of my face, and I nearly choked on my tea as he laughed even louder.“Aya... relax, I was living in China for a while before returning to Japan. I used to have a sister living there, but she passed a few months prior, during New Year’s Eve. I have to bring her ashes to the ancestral home”
“Oh......”I replied dumbly, not sure how to respond.(What an intelligent response, Jincheng, you are a prince for godssake)
It was Hongbing who finally said what I wanted to say.“We are sorry for your loss.”He wasn’t pitying that old man per se, but by the sad tone, it seemed that he just said it to console himself since those words reminded him of his little sister who died well before her time.
We drank our tea silently as it started to rain heavily.
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“So you are Zhu Jincheng”,he nods in my direction, ”and he is Liu Hongbing”,he looks in Hongbing’s direction,“and both of you are not from this time period?”The old man asked in disbelief, colouring his features.
“To be honest, the only thing I remember was standing with my troops before waking up here,”I began “, and I was serving tea for my excellency”, Hongbing added, supporting my claim.
“I figured, since you both look.....”he gestures towards both of our garments, my metal plated armour and Hongbing’s assassin regalia with his sword, ”out of place here. I don’t think anybody wears that anymore”
“Aha... ha...Haa,”I scratch my neck laughing weakly. No wonder we got weird looks our way.
Our dear assassin, never the pragmatist, cuts to the chase,“Where-and when-are we?
The elderly man sighs.“Well, since you both want to know so badly, you are in my hometown, Osaka, and the year is 2025”
Japan.......2025
Years no..... centuries by the looks of it
(I feel sick.....)
I meet Hongbing’s gaze. For once, we are in perfect agreement
We are screwed
