I fell into step behind the Steward, following him away from the tranquil pond and onto a covered walkway that snaked deeper into the estate. As we walked, I absorbed everything, my senses on high alert. The Eastern Wing, where he was taking me, was clearly the domain of the household's think tank. We passed other men in fine robes, some carrying scrolls, others engaged in quiet, intense conversation. They all stopped and bowed deeply as the steward approached, their deference bordering on fear. The uniformed ‘Wolves' were fewer here, an assumption of loyalty woven into the very atmosphere of quiet, intellectual intensity.

  After a few minutes, Feng stopped before a set of rooms opening onto a small, private courtyard with a single, elegant plum tree. “These are your quarters,” he stated flatly.

  He slid open the door, revealing a space that made me pause. A small reception area with a low table gave way to a study furnished with a large rosewood desk, an inkstone, and shelves already filled with scrolls. Beyond a painted screen was a sleeping chamber with a comfortable-looking bed. The luxury was understated and tasteful.

  Laid out on the bed was a complete set of new clothes: a scholar's robe of dark grey silk, inner tunic of fine linen, a formal cap, and soft leather boots.

  My mind was filled with the practical questions of this new existence. As if reading my thoughts, Steward Feng began to lay out the terms of my service.

  “A servant boy named Xiao Qi is assigned to this courtyard,” he said. “He will bring your meals, fetch tea, and see to your laundry. He is thirteen. Do not distract him with trivialities, and do not mistreat him. He has eyes and ears.” The warning was clear. “If you need him to run errands outside the Manor, please make use of the servant’s door within your own courtyard.” He pointed to a small side door on the outer wall of the manor. “As for your remuneration,” he continued, “your stipend will be five taels of silver per month.”

  Five taels of silver. It was a fortune, enough to buy a small house in a lesser city. In this era, before the inflation of later years, each tael was worth about two thousand wen. The Xiǎo'èr at the teahouse likely didn't make that in a year. I could probably fill this courtyard with húbǐng.

  “Your food, lodging, and attire are, of course, provided for,” he added. “Lord Feng rewards results and expects absolute discretion. You are his man now.” He placed a scroll bound with a red ribbon on the desk. “This is a detailed map of the estate. Learn it. You are restricted to the Eastern Wing and the main gardens unless otherwise summoned. The Western Pavilions are the family's private quarters, and the Northern Compound is for the household guard. You are not to go there. Understood?”

  "Yes, Steward Feng." I gave him a polite bow. "And you have my gratitude for leading me here."

  "Good." He said simply. "Acquaint yourself with your new life. Change into your new robes. You will be summoned when the master needs you.”

  With a final, sharp nod, he slid the door shut, the lack of his footsteps was somewhat unsettling. The silence that descended was profound, filled only by the rich scent of aged rosewood and clean silk. For a brief moment I was alone.

  The first order of business was to shed the grime and sweat of my former life. Here it was an oasis of calm. A young boy soon entered gingerly through the gate. This must be Xiao Qi. He was thin, almost bird-like in a simple blue hemp tunic that was slightly too large for his frame. His bare feet were grey with dust, and his hands, though small, were already calloused from work. His face was lightly smudged with dirt, but his eyes were large and dark, holding a caution that was far older than his thirteen years.

  “Xiao Qi,” I said, my voice even.

  The boy jumped as if struck. I noticed his pause in surprise at seeing my simple clothes. Then he made up for lost time and scrambled to drop to his knees, pressing his forehead to the ground in a full kowtow.

  "M-Master!" he stammered, his voice muffled by the ground. "This servant is here! How may I serve you?"

  I softened my tone and reached down to lift him up. "There is no need to be alarmed. I am Zhang Rulin. I would like to take a bath."

  My simple introduction seemed to shock him more than a command would have. A master giving his name to a servant? He rose hesitantly to his knees, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground. "Of... of course, Master Zhang! At once! This servant will have a tub and hot water brought immediately!" He bowed again before scrambling to his feet and scurrying away.

  While I waited, I returned inside. I unrolled the map of the estate on my desk. It was a work of art, detailing everything: guard quarters, kitchens, the infirmary. I began to commit it to memory.

  The bath soon arrived in the form of a large tub filled with steaming water carried by two adult servants and Xiao Qi laid out fresh towels and a small block of fragrant soap. I asked them to place everything in the privacy of my bedroom. I folded my old clothes, smelling of the market and more besides, and neatly stowed them.

  As I sank into the heat, the grime of the city and the lingering tension of the fight dissolved. It was the first moment of true luxury I had known in this world. Later, dressed in clean silk robes, I sat at my desk as Xiao Qi brought a tray with a simple meal of rice, steamed fish, and vegetables. I meant to chat with him a little, but he retreated from the room and to the smaller servant's quarters across my courtyard.

  That night though, sleep would not come. The silence of the elegant room, a blessing just hours before, now felt like a crushing weight. Without the constant hum of a computer, the distant wail of a siren, or the glow of a screen, there was nothing to distract me from the gaping void that had opened in my life.

  The feeling of being in my fiancée's presence was something I sorely missed.

  I must have slept for some time, but at some point woke up in a moment of panic, I realised she might fade slowly in my mind. The feeling of her might not disappear, but I dreaded the day I could not picture her face. By then, the dawn was already playing at the edges of the horizon so I went to study and tried to draw her face. It was a disaster. The brush, a beautiful tool of wolf hair and bamboo, betrayed me as it always had in life. It felt alive in my hand, but it refused to obey. The curve of her smile became a clumsy smear, the light in her eyes a dead blotch of ink.

  Stolen story; please report.

  I'd always been awful at drawing people, and that was with a pencil and not an unfamiliar brush. I could use a pencil.

  That morning, I summoned Xiao Qi. He knelt dutifully, a now-familiar expression of wary obedience on his face. “Xiao Qi,” I said, absentmindedly. “We have an important task. We are going to invent a new kind of noodle.”

  He blinked in confusion. “A… noodle, Master?”

  “Yes. A noodle for writing.”

  If he thought I was insane, he was wise enough not to show it. His skepticism, however, was a palpable force in the room. I explained the plan in detail: we needed simple willow charcoal, ground to the finest possible dust, and a lump of fine, clean river clay to act as a binder. We spent an hour working the two together with a bit of water, kneading it like dough to get all the air out in the courtyard. Finally, we rolled the stiff, black paste into long, thin rods, which I laid on a board to dry in the late summer sun.

  The next step required outside help. "I need you to take these to a potter," I told Xiao Qi, handing him a generous string of coins. "Tell him it is an experiment for a new kind of ink stick. He must fire them in his kiln, but at a low heat, just enough to harden the clay. If he gets them too hot, they'll be useless.” I smiled to him “You can keep any coins left over.”

  Xiao Qi returned that evening, visibly happy, recounted how the old potter had grumbled about 'rich men's follies' but had, for a price, agreed to fire the strange "black noodles."

  Our first batch was too hard and brittle, cracking far too easily and leaving barely a smudge.

  I took the time to adjust the ratio of charcoal to clay, opting for more fine charcoal powder in the mix.

  The results were much better, now more than half of the rods were exactly the right consistency.

  When I showed Xiao Qi the finished product, one of the charcoal rods glued neatly inside a split bamboo casing his reaction was one of dawning recognition. He took it, then picked up a simple piece of burnt willow, the kind of drawing charcoal he was familiar with. He drew a line with each. The old stick was faint, smudgy, and coated his fingers in soot. The pencil was dark, precise, and clean.

  "Ah," he said, a smile spreading across his face. "It's a charcoal stick... but better. Much better. My hands stay clean." He looked from the simple tool to me, his admiration not for a miracle, but for a clever and practical solution.

  In the following days, I immersed myself in the scrolls and my hobby. With my new pencils, and a crude but functional ruler and protractor I procured via craftsmen, my work changed. I could now draft proper schematics. Xiao Qi, now a willing accomplice in my strange projects and I suspected it had warmed him to me a great deal.

  A week passed. I finally got used to a much reduced bathing schedule than I’d been used to. Not to mention the lack of flushing toilets. Xiao Qi must have thought me mad to insist on walking to the outhouse myself rather than making use of the chamber pot he’d have to take out himself. I felt bad about having him serve me, he was a bright enough child who deserved far better than his current status. I had the creeping suspicion his enthusiasm with helping me with my unusual requests came largely from an ingrained desire to please me, a survival reflex, but I thought I could see some genuine interest underneath.

  On the other hand he was less enthusiastic about my insistence on bathing frequently, he didn’t complain about bringing the heated water, but more so that I insisted he needed to bathe often as well, wash his hands regularly before he ate, and brushed his teeth. Not that he thought he was unworthy or anything, he just found all these restrictions uncomfortable, although he reluctantly followed my instructions to the letter.

  I could not express how happy I was when I discovered that toothbrushes were already a thing here, even if toothpaste remained to be invented.

  On the morning of the eighth day, I was at my desk, pencil flying across the page. With my ruler and protractor, I was drafting another revision of a counterweight trebuchet. I'd spent a lot of time working out how I might have built one. The Engineer within me missed his day job and this was the kind of part-time that scratched a certain itch.

  The physics were simple enough, basically just first-year dynamics. Any engineering student could work through the math. The challenge was adapting it to local materials and construction methods.

  If anything, at least it took my mind away from thinking about personal things. If I allowed myself to dwell on what was missing from my life it’d be all I could think about, and even in downtime that might prove to be my undoing.

  I had to guess on how strong the wood would be, but I suppose I could expect a supply of older growths.

  Could the design have actually been built? Probably not, these were the more fantastical sketches akin to what might go into a space opera cross section design book. Very cool to look at, fun to fantasize about, but I’d need an army of experienced builders and years of iteration to make it come to fruition.

  I chuckled to myself. Perhaps Da Vinci was also a transmigrator after all. Then I caught myself, considering I was very much living in the past that possibility was shockingly realistic now. I leaned back in my chair, crossed my arms as I considered the ramifications.

  Wang Mang was another excellent transmigration candidate. But if I was to learn from his example, then changing things here might not be as easy as it appears. For one I wasn’t sure I’d really want to change anything, grandfather paradox and all. Perhaps I’d never meet my beloved, perhaps she’d never be born at all. I shivered, pencils were probably harmless enough, but I’d have to resist the urge of more exciting developments.

  Xiao Qi was nearby, carefully sharpening a new batch of charcoal rods with my utility knife. A cough caught both of our attentions, neither of us having heard footsteps or our courtyard door opening.

  We both froze, looking up like a pair of deer caught in a hunter's lantern. Steward Feng stood in the doorway, his presence sucking the air from the room. His arrival was always silent, always unannounced. For a long moment, he simply stood there, his sharp eyes taking in the scene: the master's new aide and a servant boy, huddled over a desk littered with strange tools and even stranger drawings.

  Then, he moved. He walked slowly to the desk, his gaze sweeping over the scattered papers. His eyes passed over what he must have thought was a dozen amateurish sketches of a woman's face without a flicker of interest, dismissing them as the sentimental trifles they were. Then his gaze locked onto the large, central drawing. The complex, technically precise diagram of the siege engine. His expression sharpened. This was not a trifle. His eyes then moved to the instruments that had created such a thing. He picked up one of the pencils, weighing it in his hand. His gaze shifted to the ruler with its carefully scored markings, and the protractor beside it. He was concentrating, his intelligent mind deconstructing the purpose of each object. A long, silent minute passed. Then, a flicker. It was a subtle thing, a faint, almost imperceptible upturn at the corner of his mouth, not quite a human smile, but a glint of intellectual curiosity.

  He finally looked up, his gaze falling upon the two of us, still frozen in place. The faint hint of amusement touched his voice, breaking the tension like a plucked string.

  “The master will see you,” he said, his eyes twinkling for just an instant. “Bring your... curiosities.”