Xie Zheng was reading documents when Fan Chang Ning burst into the room like a small, violent storm.
“Jiefu! I figured out romance,” she announced.
He blinked and immediately rolled up whatever he was reading like a guilty official hiding corruption evidence. “You figured what out?”
“You’re doing it wrong,” she said, climbing into the chair across from him and kneeling on it like a general planning a war. “You can’t just stand there and look at my sister like a sad ghost.”
“I am not a sad ghost.”
She ignored that. “Do you like my sister?” she asked bluntly.
Xie Zheng felt like someone had just shoved an entire pig leg down his throat.
“I… I…” he scrambled for an answer, suddenly finding the table extremely interesting.
His silence was answered by Chang Ning’s slow, smug grin—the kind only small children and very dangerous politicians possess.
“I have a plan,” she announced.
Xie Zheng sighed internally and decided the safest thing to do was to pretend to work. He picked up the ink stick and began grinding ink very seriously, as if the future of the empire depended on it.
“And for this plan to work,” she continued, “you need to trick my sister.”
He finally looked up. “I am not tricking your sister.”
She leaned forward and whispered loudly, as if revealing state secrets, “If you want a kiss, you can’t say, ‘Please kiss me.’ That’s stupid.”
Xie Zheng nearly knocked over the ink pot. “Wait, what—? And why would I want to k—?”
“You have to do it like the bao bun,” Chang Ning cut in impatiently.
“Like bao bun?”
“Yes!” she said proudly. “The bao bun method. Mr and Mrs Zhao taught me.”
Xie Zheng felt immediate distrust. The Zhao couple were not bad people. But Mr Zhao had once forced him to drink donkey medicine and proudly declared him his first human clinical experiment. And Mrs Zhao believed pig intestines tasted better if they were only washed once. Based on this track record, Xie Zheng was certain any romantic manoeuvre developed by this household would be extremely dangerous.
Chang Ning explained very seriously, using large hand gestures like a storyteller.
“If I want someone’s bao bun, I don’t say, ‘Give me your bao bun.’ I say, ‘I haven’t eaten all day… it would be very nice if someone kind shared his bao bun with me.’ Then he gives me the bao bun.”
Xie Zheng stared at her, his face caught between embarrassment and exhaustion. He decided pretending to be stupid might be the safest strategy.
“And your point is?” he asked.
“My point is,” she said, pointing at him, “you have to make her want to kiss you.”
Xie Zheng slowly closed his eyes. How he, Marquis of Wu’an, war veteran, survivor of court politics, battlefield strategist, had ended up discussing kissing strategies with his wife’s five-year-old sister was a question the heavens refused to answer.
“This is the worst plan I have ever heard,” he said.
“It is a very good plan,” Chang Ning insisted. “So if you want a kiss, you don’t ask for a kiss. You say something like… something like…” She thought very hard, her face scrunched up. “…‘This candy is very sweet. Do you want some now?'”
“That makes no sense,” he said automatically. Unfortunately, it made perfect sense. His pride, however, as Marquis of Wu’an, would never allow him to admit that a toddler was giving him romantic strategy advice.
“Yes, it does,” she continued confidently. “Then you share the candy. Then, somehow, there is a kiss. I haven’t figured out the middle yet, but it will work.”
In which Fan Chang Ning was the genius behind the signature Tangerine peel kiss (and other crazy romance manoeuvres thereafter).
**Full version at
https://archiveofourown.org/works/82143091/chapters/216173541
