Missed Chances

                                    

                                          
After talking with his mother for awhile, Wu Jian decided to go find Wu Meiying and Hou Jingshu. He wandered the compound in search of the two. Someone would occasionally cross his field of vision, most of them Wu clansmen around the same age as him, but none of them the pair he was looking for.
He had already searched his training ground and the library, which he thought the most likely places to find the pair, but they were not at either of those spots. Wu Jian eventually traveled to Wu Meiying's building.
Wu Meiying had been moved into her own building ever since her powers began aiding the Wu Clan. It was not as large as his own, but it was bigger than anyone else their own save Hou Jingshu, who received special treatment because she was a princess.
When he entered her bedroom, he found the girl in question napping on her bed. She looked resplendent as she slept. With her eyes closed, her long lashes revealed themselves in all their splendor. They were dark and stood out starkly against her snow-white skin. At the moment, she was wearing a very light dress, which showcased the lines of her body and allowed him a glimpse of her chest as it rose and fell.
He didn't see Hou Jingshu right away. She was out on the porch, gazing at the courtyard across the way, her legs dangling over the edge as she kicked them back and forth. He couldn't see what she was staring at, not at first. Then he caught sight of two young men sparring in the courtyard.
Wu Jian said nothing as he sat himself beside her, easing his legs over the edge, until they dangled.
He watched the two young men spar. Both of them were fairly decent. They were older than him by at least two years. The one of the left was Wu Ling and the other one was Wu Bo. Both had a strength of around six thousand, which meant they would likely break through to the Hunger Realm once they turned sixteen, but they were only fifteen at the moment.
"Are you feeling as restless as I am?" asked Hou Jingshu.
"I guess that would depend on how restless you're feeling." He paused, shrugged, and continued. "That said, I am feeling pretty restless, yeah. I can't help but worry about how Father, Wu Taohua, and the others are."
The Wu Clan might have the advantage in numbers, but that didn't mean they wouldn't suffer casualties. Deaths in battle were expected. It was very likely they would lose several clansmen or maybe even several dozen clansmen during this time.
What would happen if one of those people was Father, Wu Taohua, or one of the elders? They were the backbone of this family. Victory over the Ming and Juishi Families would become pointless if the clan lost them.
"I feel the same way." Hou Jingshu pressed a hand to her chest. "It's strange. I was so upset with Father when he first made me come here. I despised how he decided to marry me off without my consent, dragged me across the Shang Kingdom, and made me live in this small city with nothing but a few thousand people. Back then, the only thing about this situation I liked was how living this far out granted me more freedom than when I was living in the palace."
Wu Jian couldn't quite imagine how she felt, but that was only because they used to live in such different worlds. He had always been cowardly and easily frightened when he was younger. That was why Wu Yong would bully him all the time. At the same time, he felt like he understood her initial dislike, at least a little.
"I don't think I would have appreciated being taken from everything I knew either," he said out loud. "If Father dragged me away from my home, away from Wu Meiying, I would have protested against it with all my might, so I think I can at least imagine how you would have felt."
Just imagining being torn apart from the girl he had always loved made him feel nauseous. It was not something he wanted to think about.
Hou Jingshu had lived that experience. She had been taken from the only home she had ever known, from the place and people she loved, and was dumped into this small hick town out in the countryside.