Five years. Five years of life for some version of her brother, five years of training together, meeting for tea, visiting their parents, that some other version of her got to have that she did not. Some other version of her who has no idea that somewhere, she exists, a Liu Mingyan who would kill for five more years. For one more year. For a day, just to say goodbye.

She picks up her tea, mirroring Shen Yuan's pose but neither sipping nor truly seeing it. She wonders what that other her thinks of this false Shen Qingqiu, what she thinks of the monthly visits her ge makes. Is his poison common knowledge? She can't imagine it is. And even before Shen Qingqiu had killed him, Liu Qingge had had no love for the Peak Lord of Qing Jing. Needlessly cruel, he'd told her once, and she knows he could not understand Yue Qingyuan's tolerance for the man. It was the only mark against his respect for the sect leader, that he allowed Shen Qingqiu's blatant abuse and took no action against him.

She does not know how to ask about any of this. It feels so far away, a time in her life she has not thought on in years. And yet--the man sitting across from her had stepped directly from it into her Emperor's life, and changed everything. Perhaps it was the same for her ge. And now Shen Yuan was gone from his life, as Binghe had been gone from hers.

"When last you saw him," she asks, because it seems an easy thing, a place to start, "what was he doing?"